Towards a usage-based model of early code-switching: Evidence from three language pairs

Abstract

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.

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

“…As for bilingual children, Quick et al (2018b) show that in the mixed utterances of a German-English speaking child aged 1;10-3;1, 61% utterances belong to the category of partially schematic units. These results also hold for another German-English child and her English-Polish and English-Finnish peers: of all their mixed utterances studied, 63%, 64% and 61% respectively are partially schematic units (Gaskins et al 2019b). This demonstrates that bilingual speech is subject to the same processes of segmentation as that of monolingual children.…”

“…By contrast, English articles are hardly ever stressed and therefore they are not fully articulated: the indefinite article is most commonly realised as a short unstressed / Referring back to the UB theory can help us to explain these cross-linguistic differences. According to earlier CS research, mixed ANPs can arise via the frame in one language hosting a noun in the other (Gaskins et al 2019b). In bilingual acquisition, this shows at most two possible routes to creating mixed ANPs.…”

“…The vast majority of CS can be explained by the creation of the constructional slot. A study of three two-to three-year-olds exposed to English-Polish, German-English, and English-Finnish reports that in 81%, 88% and 87% of all mixed utterances respectively the switch from one language to the other occurs between the monolingual frame from one language and the slot filler from another (Gaskins et al 2019b).…”

“…In the constructions discussed in our paper, articles are taken as frames because they represent a closed-class category with low type-token ratios, often recycled in speech (Gaskins et al 2019b;Quick et al 2018b). Nouns are taken as slot fillers as they have the highest TTRs of all word types and their use is rarely restricted to specific constructions (Goodman et al 2008).…”

“…Data from Sadie's corpus cover a slightly younger age bracket than those of her peers. However, the decision to include the earliest recordings is justified by the observation that Sadie had developed noun phrases in time for the first recording (Gaskins et al 2019b). These recordings were made on average every 4-7 days, with either Sadie's Polish-speaking mother (n = 10), her English-speaking father (n = 10) or sometimes both parents present at the table (n = 10).…”