The present study investigates whether L1 Spanish-L2 English instructed and immersed adult sequential bilinguals show L1 attrition effects in the oral production of subject referring expressions in topic continuity. We tested the predictions from the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis and controlled for two factors that modulate rates of overproduction, namely antecedent distance and the number of potential antecedents. The results from two oral retelling tasks showed that instructed and immersed bilinguals significantly employ more overt material where functional monolinguals resort to the use of null pronouns. Moreover, factors such as antecedent distance and the number of potential antecedents arguably influence the production of the bilingual groups more strongly. Overall, L1 attrition effects are observed in both L2-immersed and L2-instructed bilinguals. However, attrition effects appear to be milder in instructed bilinguals, who sometimes pattern with functional monolinguals. These results call for new avenues within L1 attrition.
