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Language mixing in young bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Wendy E. Redlinger  and
Tschang-Zin Park
Wendy E. Redlinger
Affiliation:
Universität Bern
Tschang-Zin Park
Affiliation:
Universität Bern
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Abstract

The speech of four two-year-old children growing up bilingually in a German-speaking community was studied for periods varying between five and nine months. An analysis of their language mixing revealed an initially higher rate of mixing which diminished with a growth in language development as measured in MLU. The data suggest that the children were at various stages in a gradual process of language differentiation thus providing support for the one-system theory of bilingual acquisition. An examination of the distribution of lexical substitutions by part of speech revealed that nouns were most frequently substituted by all children; however, more function words were substituted than content words overall.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 337 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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Footnotes

[*]

Address for correspondence: Dr W. E. Redlinger, L. Miranda & Assoc., Inc., 4340 East-West Hwy., Suite 906, Bethesda, Maryland 20014, U.S.A.

References

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