Psycholinguistic Dimensions of Igbo Language Attrition Among Returnee Igbo Emigrants: A Study of Speakers Returning from Europe and North America

This dissertation investigates the psycholinguistic dimensions of Igbo language attrition among Igbo returnee emigrants who spent extended periods in European and North American countries before returning to Nigeria, examining attrition patterns, compensatory strategies, and re-acquisition trajectories in this understudied bilingual population. Language attrition research has focused predominantly on immigrant populations in host countries, leaving the reverse process of re-entry language adjustment virtually uninvestigated for African language speakers. The study recruits eighty-four returnee Igbo speakers who resided abroad for periods ranging from five to twenty-five years, assessing their Igbo language proficiency through a battery of psycholinguistic tasks including lexical decision tasks, verbal fluency assessments, tonal discrimination experiments, morphological elicitation, and self-paced reading paradigms. A time-since-return variable is incorporated to model re-acquisition trajectories. Longitudinal follow-up assessments at six and twelve months post-recruitment are conducted for fifty-one participants. Findings reveal a consistent attrition profile characterised by lexical access slowing, tonal production inaccuracy, morphological simplification, and increased reliance on English-patterned discourse organisation strategies. Re-acquisition is non-linear, with lexical fluency recovering faster than tonal accuracy, and tonal accuracy showing the slowest and most variable recovery trajectory. Attrition severity is predicted by length of absence, age of departure, and maintenance activity during the abroad period. The dissertation contributes original psycholinguistic data to Igbo bilingualism research. Keywords: Igbo language attrition, psycholinguistics, returnee emigrants, re-acquisition, bilingualism.