Авторы статьи описывают структурные, семантические и прагматические особенности русско-английских смешанных высказываний в речи двух детей, одновременно усваивающих русский и английский языки в русской семье в России. Такие высказывания трактуются как переключения кодов, имеющие возрастную специфику на ранних этапах развития билингвизма (до 3 лет). Они подчиняются принципам грамматики кодовых переключений, которые предусмотрены рамочной моделью матричного языка, разработанной в зарубежной лингвистике.

No abstract

The main objective of the article is to compare the structural characteristics of code switching in the speech of four-year-old children who learn Russian and English in Russia and the United States. The material of the study was extracted from video and audio recordings made by the authors during the observation of four-year-old children in the process of their interaction with other children and adults. The analysis of the structural characteristics of intra-phrasal switching was carried out on the basis of the provisions of the theory and interaction of matrix and guest languages (a framework model of a matrix language) developed by K. Myers-Scott. The structure of code switching in the context of monoethnic child bilingualism, which was formed in children in Russia, and in situations of the development of heritational child bilingualism in Russian children in the United States, has quite a few common characteristics. The main differences that were observed in switching between Russian and American children are quantitative. Interpretation of the research results is closely related to the specifics of the formation of children's bilingualism and the socio-cultural characteristics of bilingual communication. For contact linguistics, observations of the interpenetration of the morphosyntactic features of the Russian and English languages during their close contact in oral speech are relevant.

The present study aims to explore the metalinguistic utterances that accompany language choice, code switches, and express the attitude to them in the speech of two bilingual siblings within a Russian monoethnic family (all family members represent the same ethnic group and the same culture and are native speakers of the same language). These children have been simultaneously acquiring Russian and English since their first month of life. The bilingual strategy used in this family is «one parent – one language»: mother and her relatives speak Russian to the children, while the father and his parents interact with the boys in English. When the children participate in bilingual communication, they frequently have to switch between the two languages (codes), which stimulates their reflections on languages, interlocutors, and bilingual speech. Such communicative situations make the children produce metalinguistic and metacommunicative utterances in each of their languages. Studying these utterances in structural, semantic, and pragmatic aspects, the authors evaluate the children’s metalinguistic competence and the ways it is related to the development of their bilingualism. The results of the research show that the language chosen for metalinguistic utterances can demonstrate its dominance in the development of non-balanced bilingualism. At the same time, it serves as one of the indicators showing how the children develop their metalinguistic activities. The authors argue that the growing dominance of Russian does not prevent the children from preserving a positive attitude to English as the «weak» language in their bilingual repertoire.

The paper focuses on the pragmatic peculiarities of Russian-English code-switching in the speech of the children who simultaneously acquire Russian and English according to "one person – one language" strategy within a Russian family in Russia. The research data are pragmatically marked utterances of the two boys made when each of them was at the age of three to five. Their bilingualism developed as a monoethnic one since they acquire one of the languages (Russian) from a native Russian speaker and the other (English) from a non-native speaker who belongs to Russian ethnos and culture. The authors argue that pragmatic functions of code-switching reflect the children's attitude to each language and bilingual communication. Child bilingual pragmemes are studied longitudinally, which helps the researchers to reveal the dynamics of code-switching intentions within three years of children's bilingual communication. The results of the study demonstrate the prevalence of addressee-oriented and inducing pragmatic functions of code-switches during the whole period under study. The explanation for this fact lies in the specific strategy of bilingual development and the understanding of the importance of each language in children's bilingual communication. By the age of five, the children gradually develop their bilingual self-reflection, which results in more frequent metalinguistic pragmemes in their mixed utterances.