Anaphora resolution in L1 Italian in a Swedish-speaking environment before and after L1 re-immersion: A study on attrition.

• First language attrition affects Italian null pronouns. • Late bilinguals select the closest available antecedent (i.e., the object). • First language attrition affects processing. This study investigates whether L1 attrition effects on anaphora resolution decrease with L1 re-immersion. A group of 20 Italian-Swedish late bilinguals was tested once before and once after their summer vacation in Italy, and compared with a control group of 21 Italian monolinguals that was also tested once before and once after a similar time interval. Both groups assigned overt and null pronouns to a subject or an object antecedent in a self-paced comprehension task. The results of the study suggest that attrition affects null pronouns, an outcome inconsistent with previous findings wherein attrition effects were limited to Italian overt pronouns (e.g., Tsimpli et al., 2004). This outcome supports the hypothesis that attrition affects processing rather than representations. Moreover, in the second session, both groups improved in terms of antecedent assignment and response times. This finding suggests a task effect rather than a re-immersion effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]