How does the bilingual child assemble her first multiword constructions? Can switch placement in bilingual combinations be explained by language usage? This study traces the emergence of frozen and semi-productive patterns throughout the diary collection period (0;10.10–2;2.00) to document the acquisition of constructions. Subsequently the focus falls on most frequently produced monolingual and bilingual combinations captured through 30 video recordings (1;10.16–2;5.11) which are linked to the diary data to confirm their productivity. First, we verify that like in monolingual development, frequency-based piecemeal acquisition of constructions can be reproduced in our bilingual diary data: in the child’s earliest combinations 87% are deemed as semi-productive slot-and-frame patterns. Second, video recordings show that productivity, understood as a function of type frequency, plays a role in determining the switch placement in early bilingual combinations only to some extent. A more accurate explanation for why frames from one language take slot fillers from another is their autonomous use and semantic independence. We also highlight limitations of input: while the child was raised with two languages separated in the input, she continued to switch languages which suggests that switching is developmental.

Usage-based studies trace children’s early language back to slot-and-frame patterns which dominate spontaneous language use. We apply the Traceback method to data from three bilingual children with English as one of their languages and Polish, German, or Finnish as the other to examine what these children’s code-switching has in common and how it differs in light of the genealogical distance between the languages used. Their bilingual constructions are derived from individual corpora of naturalistic interactions of each child respectively and traced back to monolingual language produced previously to establish whether they are unprocessed chunks or partially schematic units. Based on this, we propose a model of switching which helps us to distinguish between the qualitative aspects of bilingual use in these two types of combinations. Our results show that all three children filter out some mixing occurring in chunks before these give basis to longer units. Whatever bilingual combinations remain frozen in those units can be explained by phonological overlap of the children’s two languages, which is highest in the acquisition of English-German due to their genealogical proximity.

This diary study looks at the acquisition of early words in two bilingual sisters (0;9–2;03.22 and 0;9–1;09.13) exposed to English and Polish from birth. It examines whether their parents’ input recorded on video can explain the proportions of different types of words learnt. Their bias for social words is explained by these words being heard in isolation; that for nouns by competitive proportions of noun types heard in the input. Contrarily, the late acquisition of closed-class items is explained by their high usage rates as part of constructions. Meanwhile, high numbers of early verbs in both children’s Polish are explained by inflected Polish verbs being heard (a) in isolation and (b) at the beginning and end of utterances more frequently than their uninflected English counterparts. These results are discussed within the context of the usage-based theory, with focus on the impact of word types for the acquisition of word groups.

Objectives: This study investigates monolingual and code-mixed utterances in four bilingual children with different language combinations (German–English, English–Polish, Finnish–English, and French–Russian) in terms of utterance lengths (MLUs) and complexities offering a usage-based (UB) explanation based on cognitive mechanisms. Methodology: Utterances from four different child bilingual corpora were extracted and coded for individual monolingual languages and bilingual utterances. Data and analysis: 35.441 utterances between the age of 2–4 were analyzed in terms of MLU and syntactic complexity. Findings/conclusions: Results showed that for all children monolingual MLUs and complexities reflect their input situations: the more input in one language, the longer and more complex those utterances were. However, in all four children code-mixed utterances were longer and more complex from the beginning of the recordings. Implications: This is the first study that systematically compares MLU scores and complexities of monolingual and bilingual utterances taking diverse language combinations into account and offering a UB explanation based on chunking and entrenchment processes as a new alternative for further research in bilingualism.

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