Codeswitching at the interface of language-specific lexicons and the computational system

Abstract

It has been noted by many researchers that young bilingual children pass through a stage of early mixing which extends approximately until the age of 2;6 and ends abruptly. Research on bilingual first language acquisition has clearly excluded the possibility to explain mixed utterances as the result of a fused lexical or grammatical system. However, the actual debate on the reasons for early mixing still continues. Two main approaches have dominated the field of language mixing in adults: One assumes that adult's codeswitching is constrained by grammatical principles, suggesting that a third grammar is responsible for the grammaticality of mixed utterances (e.g., the Equivalence Constraint formulated by Poplack (1980), or the Functional Head Constraint formulated by Belazi, Rubin & Toribio (1994) among others). Since child grammar is supposed to be organized differently from adult grammar, the grammatical “ingredients” of the principles which constrain codeswitching are absent in early child language (Köppe & Meisel, 1995). It therefore follows that early mixing in young bilingual children is not to be considered as constrained by any grammatical principles. The other approach argues that codeswitching in adults is not regulated by external grammatical principles, but that the only constraints which govern codeswitching are those required by the two languages involved (MacSwan, 2000). We will show that this assumption holds for child language as well. Our analysis of mixing opens the perspective that child grammar can be considered to be organized in the same way as adult grammar. Furthermore, we will argue that early mixing is related to developing performance abilities, in the present paper to the readiness on the bilingual child's part to speak the language(s).

Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: Can input frequency account for it?

“…The more fluent the child is in the language with the computationally complex analysis, the least is the effect of crosslinguistic influence. 16 Such an analysis is supported by earlier findings on the effects of language fluency on cross-linguistic phenomena, reported, for instance, in Cantone and Müller (2005) and Hauser-Grüdl and Arencibia Guerra (2007). Cantone and Müller have shown that, in the early years of bilingual language acquisition, code-switching and language fluency are negatively correlated with one another.…”

Dual language use in sign-speech bimodal bilinguals: fNIRS brain-imaging evidence

“…Intra-utterance use of two languages has been found to be complex and rule-governed language-specific behavior that takes into account structure and meaning of both of the bilingual’s languages—and this is surprisingly the case even in the youngest bilinguals (Cantone & Muller, 2005; Grosjean & Miller, 1994; Holowka, Brosseau-Lapre, & Petitto, 2002; Lanza, 1992; MacSwan, 2005; Paradis, Nicoladis, & Genesee, 2000; Petitto & Holowka, 2002; Petitto, Katerelos, Levy, Gauna, Tetreault, & Ferraro, 2001; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003; Poplack, 1980). For instance, in French, adjectives typically follow the noun that they modify, whereas, in English, adjectives precede the noun (e.g., “table rouge” in French versus “red table” in English).…”

A Crosslinguistic Study of Child Code-Switching within the Noun Phrase: A Usage-Based Perspective

“…Code-switching (CS)-the ability to shift seamlessly between one's two languagesis one of the most remarkable features of bilingualism, and especially striking when it comes from very young children. Children aged two to three, who are the focus of this study, are widely reported to use CS in their speech; they use more CS if it is modelled in parental input (Comeau et al 2003), and when addressed in their weaker language which subsequently becomes the language they are expected to produce in interaction (Cantone and Müller 2005;Gaskins et al 2019a). But children are still reported to switch even when their caregivers do not use bilingual utterances (Gaskins et al 2019a;Mishina-Mori 2011), which suggests that CS is developmental.…”