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It has been observed that children mix languages more often if they have been exposed to mixed speech, especially if they are in bilingual company. Very little research, however, exists on the code switching (CS) of children brought up in multilingual contexts. The study discussed in this paper investigates the grammatical and socio-pragmatic characteristics of the conversational CS of three Afrikaans-English bilingual children and aims to contribute towards a better understanding of child CS. The study was conducted through the analysis of spontaneous conversational CS elicited during multiple play sessions. Data were analysed within the frameworks of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model and Conversation Analysis (CA). The study accounts for the different types of CS that occur, and examines which grammatical and/or socio-pragmatic difficulties may drive children to use specific types of CS, while also considering whether the context of an utterance has an influence on how and why CS takes place.

BackgroundQuantifiers form part of the discourse-internal linguistic devices that children need to access and produce narratives and other classroom discourse. Little is known about the development - especially the prodiction - of quantifiers in child language, specifically in speakers of an African language.ObjectivesThe study aimed to ascertain how well Grade 1 isiXhosa first language (L1) learners perform at the beginning and at the end of Grade 1 on quantifier comprehension and production tasks.MethodTwo low socioeconomic groups of L1 isiXhosa learners with either isiXhosa or English as language of learning and teaching (LOLT) were tested in February and November of their Grade 1 year with tasks targeting several quantifiers.ResultsThe isiXhosa LOLT group comprehended no/none, any and all fully either in February or then in November of Grade 1, and they produced all assessed quantifiers in February of Grade 1. For the English LOLT group, neither the comprehension nor the production of quantifiers was mastered by the end of Grade 1, although there was a significant increase in both their comprehension and production scores.ConclusionThe English LOLT group made significant progress in comprehension and production of quantifiers, but still performed worse than peers who had their L1 as LOLT. Generally, children with no or very little prior knowledge of the LOLT need either, (1) more deliberate exposure to quantifier-rich language or, (2) longer exposure to general classroom language before quantifiers can be expected to be mastered sufficiently to allow access to quantifier-related curriculum content.

This analysis of discourse markers so and well in Zimbabwean English (ZE) and British English was carried out to determine possible statistically significant variations in their occurrence and function frequencies in spoken and written registers, and in different genres to ascertain if they are used in the same manner in both languages and in different language use contexts. The ZE corpus and the International Corpus of English‐Great Britain (ICE‐GB) were compared to reveal statistically significant variations in some registers and genres. Regarding so, the marking implied result and the sequential so functions were more frequent in the ICE‐GB compared to the ZE corpus. Well occurred more in the ICE‐GB compared to the ZE corpus. Searching for the right phrase, rephrasing or correcting, move to main story, indirect answer, contributing an opinion, direct answer, continuing an opinion, and evaluating a previous statement occurred more in the ICE‐GB compared to the ZE corpus.