Commentary published In: Epistemological issue: What returnee bilinguals may teach us about language attrition, language stabilization, and individual variation
Edited by Matthew T. Carlson and Jorge González Alonso
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 16:1] 2026
► pp. 31–35
Commentary
The other side of the coin matters too
What changes in the former heritage language of returnees may reveal about the dynamics of bilingual language acquisition
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Konstanz.
Published online: 28 November 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.25065.cos
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.25065.cos
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Age effects
- 3.Individual variation
- 4.Differential vulnerability across linguistic domains
- 5.Regaining aspects of grammar under repeated input alternation
- 6.Concluding remarks
References
References (6)
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Coşkun Kunduz, A., & Montrul, S. (2025). How flexible are grammars past puberty? The case of relative clauses in Turkish–American returnees. Language Learning.
Flores, C., & Snape, N. (2025). What returnee bilinguals may teach us about language attrition, language stabilization, and individual variation. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
Flores, C., Sopata, A., & Rinke, E. (2025). The impact of change of environment on Polish–German returnees’ childhood languages. Effects of attrition and reinforcement on lexical knowledge. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1–20.
Kaya-Soykan, B., Antonova-Unlu, E., & Sağın Şimşek, Ç. (2023). The production and perception of Turkish evidentiality markers by Turkish–German returnees. Applied Linguistics Review, 14(2), 251–270.