infrequent use or with the inhibition of the competing L2. Grammatical attrition Grammatical attrition can be defined as "the disintegration of the structure of a first language (L1) in contact situations with a second language (L2)". In a study of bilingual Swedes raised outside of Sweden, who in their late twenties returned to their home country for schooling, there was noted to be attrition of their L1. The participants demonstrated a complete retention of the underlying syntactic structure of their L1. Notably, they exhibited the V2, verb second, word order present in most Germanic languages, except English. This rule requires the tense-marked verb of a main clause to occur in the second position of the sentence, even if that means it comes before the subject (e.g. there is an adverb at the beginning of the sentence). These speakers' ability to form sentences with V2 word order was compared against L2 learners who often overproduce the rigid SVO word order rather than applying the V2 rule. Although the study did not show evidence for attrition of syntax of the person's L1, there was evidence for attrition in the expatriates' morphology, especially in terms of agreement. They found that the bilinguals would choose to use the unmarked morphemes in place of the marked one when having to differentiate between gender and plurality; also they tend to overgeneralize where certain morphemes can be used. For example, they may use the suffix /-a/, which is used to express an indefinite plural, and overextend this morpheme to also represent the indefinite singular. There is little evidence to support the view that there is a complete restructuring of the language systems. That is, even under language attrition the syntax is largely unaffected and any variability observed is thought to be due to interference from another language, rather than attrition. L1 attriters, like L2 learners, may use language differently from native speakers. In particular, they can have variability on certain rules which native speakers apply deterministically. In the context of attrition, however, there is strong evidence that this optionality is not indicative of any underlying representational deficits: the same individuals do not appear to encounter recurring problems with the same kinds of grammatical phenomena in different speech situations or on different tasks. This suggests that problems of L1 attriters are due to momentary conflicts between the two linguistic systems and not indicative of a structural change to