Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-g96k6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T07:30:21.003Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Code-Switching in Young Bilingual Children

The Acquisition of Grammatical Constraints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Jürgen M. Meisel
Jürgen M. Meisel
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the role of grammatical prerequisites on code-switching in young bilingual children. It is proposed that code-switching is constrained not only by grammatical properties of the languages involved; it is also regulated by principles and mechanisms of language use. Constraints on code-switching are therefore defined as processing principles that, however, depend on grammatical knowledge. They ensure that switching does not result in a violation of grammatical coherence, defined in terms of both linear sequencing and structural configuration. Some of these claims are tested empirically, analyzing the speech of two bilingual children acquiring French and German simultaneously. It is argued that even in the earliest uses of mixing, constraints are not violated; in many cases they do not apply because the relevant grammatical relations do not yet hold. Code-switching is nevertheless used from early on in accordance with these constraints, as soon as a certain kind of grammatical knowledge is accessible. Most importantly, functional categories have to be implemented in the child's grammar.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 413 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bentahila, A., & Davies, E. E. (1983). The syntax of Arabic-French code-switching. Lingua, 59, 301–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, C. R. (1976). Interference vs. independent development in infant bilingualism. In Keller, G. D., Teschner, R. V., & Viera, S. (Eds.), Bilingualism in the bicentennial and beyond (pp. 86–96). New York: Bilingual Press.Google Scholar
Berk-Seligson, S. (1986). Linguistic constraints on intrasentential code-switching: A study of Spanish/Hebrew biliagualism. Language in Society, 15, 313–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clyne, M. (1987). Constraints on code switching: How universal are they? Linguistics, 25, 739–764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Houwer, A. (1990). The acquisition of two languages from birth: A case study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
di Sciullo, A. M., Muysken, P., & Singh, R. (1986). Government and code-mixing. Journal of Linguistics, 22, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genesee, F. (1989). Early bilingual development: One language or two? Journal of Child Language, 16, 161–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gingràs, R. (1974). Problems in the description of Spanish-English intrasentential code-switching. In Bills, G. (Ed.), Southwest areal linguistics (pp. 167–174). San Diego: Institute for Cultural Pluralism.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Joshi, A. K. (1985). Processing of sentences with intra-sentential code switching. In Dowty, D., Karttunen, L., & Zwicky, A. (Eds.), Natural language processing: Psychological, computational and theoretical perspectives (pp. 190–205). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kielhöfer, B. (1987). Le “bon” changement de langue et le “mauvais” mélange de langues. In Lüdi, G. (Ed.), Devenir bilingue-parler bilingue (pp. 135–155). Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kielhöfer, B., & Jonekeit, S. (1983). Zweisprachige Kindererziehung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Klavans, J. L. (1985). The syntax of code-switching: Spanish and English. In King, L. D. & Maley, C. A. (Eds.), Selected papers from the XIIIth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (pp. 213–231). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köppe, R., & Meisel, J. M. (in press). Code-switching in bilingual first language acquisition. In Milroy, L. & Muysken, P. (Eds.), One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lanza, E. (1990, 07). Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch? Paper presented at the Fifth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Budapest.Google Scholar
Lindholm, K., & Padilla, A. M. (1978). Language mixing in bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 5, 327–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClure, E. (1977). Aspects of code-switching in the discourse of bilingual Mexican-American children. In Saville-Troike, M. (Ed.), Linguistics and anthropology (pp. 93–115). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
McClure, E. (1981). Formal and functional aspects of the code-switched discourse of bilingual children. In Durán, R. P. (Ed.), Latino language and community behavior (pp. 69–94). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, B. (1984). Second language acquisition in childhood: Preschool children (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (1989). Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In Hyltenstam, K. & Obler, L. (Eds.), Bilingualism across the lifespan: Aspects of acquisition, maturity, and loss (pp. 13–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (1990). INFL-ection: Subjects and subject-verb agreement. In Meisel, J. M. (Ed.), Two first languages: Early grammatical development in bilingual children (pp. 237–298). Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (Ed.). (1992). The acquisition of verb placement: Functional categories and V2 phenomena in language development. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (1994). Getting FAT: Finiteness, agreement and tense in early grammars. In Meisel, J. M. (Ed.), Bilingual first language acquisition: French and German grammatical development (pp. 89–130). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (1991). Intersections between social motivations and structural processing in codeswitching. In ESF Network on Code-Switching and Language Contact: Papers for the Workshop on Constraints, Conditions and Models (pp. 57–81). Strasbourg: European Science Foundation.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (1992). Codeswitching as socially-motivated performance meets structurally motivated constraints. In Pütz, M. (Ed.), Thirty years of linguistic evolution (pp. 417–428). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, J. (1988). Word-internal code-switching constraints in a bilingual child's grammar. Linguistics, 26, 479–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, C. W. (1979). Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language, 55, 291–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, J.-Y. (1989). Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365–424.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radford, A. (1986). Small children's small clauses. Bangor Research Papers in Linguistics, 1, 1–38.Google Scholar
Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic theory and the acquisition of syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Redlinger, W., & Park, T. (1980). Language mixing in young bilinguals. Journal of Child Language, 7, 337–352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reidegeld, A. (1992). Grammatische Beschränkungen beim Code-switching: Eine kritische Literaturdiskussion. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Romaine, S. (1989). Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ronjat, J. (1913). Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D., & Poplack, S. (1980). A formal grammar for code-switching (Working Paper No. 8). New York: Centro de Estudios Portorriqueños.Google Scholar
Saunders, G. (1988). Bilingual children: From birth to teens. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual matters.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1985). Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In Slobin, D. I. (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Theoretical issues (Vol. 2, pp. 1157–1256). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Stenzel, A. (1994). Case assignment and functional categories in bilingual children: Routes of development and implications for linguistic theory. In Meisel, J. M. (Ed.), Bilingual first language acquisition: French and German grammatical development (pp. 161–208). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taeschner, T. (1983). The sun is feminine: A study of language acquisition in bilingual children. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timm, L. A. (1975). Spanish-English code-switching: el porqué y how-not-to. Romance Philology, 28, 473–482.Google Scholar
Veh, B. (1990). Syntaktische Aspekte des Code-Switching bei bilingualen Kindern (Französisch-Deutsch) im Vorschulalter. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. (1985). Language differentiation by the bilingual infant. Journal of Child Language, 12, 297–324.Google Scholar
Volterra, V., & Taeschner, T. (1978). The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 5, 311–326.Google Scholar
Williams, S. (1992). A study of the occurrence and functions of “da” in a very young bilingual child. Amersbek bei Hamburg: Verlag an der Lottbek.Google Scholar
Woolford, E. (1983). Bilingual code-switching and syntactic theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 14, 520–536.Google Scholar