Filling lexical gaps and more: code-switching for the power of expression by young bilinguals

Abstract

In this preregistered, longitudinal study of early code-switching, 34 US-born, Spanish–English bilingual children were recorded with a bilingual family member at 2;6 and 3;6, in Spanish-designated and English-designated interactions. Children’s Spanish and English expressive vocabulary and their exposure to code-switching were measured through direct assessment and caregiver report. The children code-switched most frequently at speaker changes; within-turn and within-utterance codeswitching were rare. By 3;6, switches to English were significantly more frequent than switches to Spanish. At both ages, Spanish proficiency was a negative predictor of the frequency of switching to English, but children’s degree of English dominance uniquely explained additional variance. Thus, children appear to code-switch not merely to fill gaps in their weaker language but to maximize their expressive power. Neither individual differences in exposure to code-switching nor in the interlocutors’ language proficiency were consistently related to the children’s rate of code-switching.

The balance of Spanish and English child-directed text in bilingual picture books

“…Interestingly, the insertion of Spanish words into English sentences is not consistent with patterns in children's spoken language; young Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. are more likely to switch into English when speaking Spanish than to use Spanish words while speaking English (Greene et al, 2013;Gutiérrez-Clellen et al, 2009;Montanari et al, 2019;Ribot and Hoff, 2014;Tulloch and Hoff, 2023), again suggesting English and Spanish are used differently in text vs. speech. Switching practices vary both within and between bilingual communities, and it may be more or less accepted to mix languages together (Anderson and Toribio, 2007;Hoff, 2020;Kircher et al, 2022;Montanari et al, 2019;Tulloch and Hoff, 2023). Thus, by including language switches at different levels, bilingual books can expose children to language conventions, in addition to linguistic and cultural content.…”