“I'm forgetting both”: L1 maintenance and codeswitching in Finnish-English language contact

Abstract

This article is a case study investigating the maintenance of Finnish in the language of two young Finnish-American bilinguals. The main source of data is a 90mins audio-taped conversation between the research participants, which was recorded in Finland after they had lived eight years in the United States and become fully fluent in English. Three main questions are addressed: (1) Are there signs of first language attrition or change from Finland-Finnish patterns in the area of morphosyntax? (2) Are there signs of imperfect acquisition of Finnish lexicon? (3) Can the research participants' codeswithing patterns be seen as indications of attrition in Finnish morphosyntax and/or imperfect acquisition of Finnish?