Language Attrition and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis

The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) is a theoretical approach according to which linguistic information is associated with atomic feature bundles and functional heads. Successful reassembly involves the reassignment of feature bundles to different functional heads. Here we discuss the benefits and challenges of modelling instances of language attrition through the lens of the FRH. Adopting Putnam & Sánchez’s (2013) position which associates incomplete acquisition and language attrition with the increased lack of activation of the recessive first language (L1) over the course of the lifespan, we demonstrate here the potential to integrate these ideas with the FRH into a unified model. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how the core ideas can be extended to research beyond the traditional generative paradigm, including an extension to probabilistic models of linguistic analysis.