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Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Elizabeth Lanza
Elizabeth Lanza*
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
*
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Oslo, Post Box 1102 Blindem, 0317 Oslo 3, Norway (e-mail: [email protected]).
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Abstract

Sociolinguists have investigated language mixing as code-switching in the speech of bilingual children three years old and older. Language mixing by bilingual two-year-olds, however, has generally been interpreted in the child language literature as a sign of the child's lack of language differentiation. The present study applies perspectives from sociolinguistics to investigate the language mixing of a bilingual two-year-old acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously in Norway. Monthly recordings of the child's spontaneous speech in interactions with her parents were made from the age of 2;0 to 2;7. An investigation into the formal aspects of the child's mixing and the context of the mixing reveals that she does differentiate her language use in con-textually sensitive ways, hence that she can code-switch. This investigation stresses the need to examine more carefully the roles of dominance and context in the language mixing of young bilingual children.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , October 1992 , pp. 633 - 658
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was financially supported by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities. An earlier version was presented at the Fifth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Budapest, July 1990. I especially wish to thank Naomi Goodz, Natela Imedadze, Bard Bredrup Knudsen, Hanne Gram Simonsen, Marilyn Vihman, Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful discussion, comments and suggestions.

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