This paper offers an inductive, exploratory study on the role of input and individual
differences in the early code-mixing of bilingual children. Drawing on data from two
German-English bilingual children, aged 2–4, we use the traceback method to check
whether their code-mixed utterances can be accounted for with the help of constructional
patterns that can be found in their monolingual data and/or in their caregivers’ input. In
addition, we apply the tracebackmethod to checkwhether the patterns used by one child
can also be found in the input of the other child. Results show that patterns found in the
code-mixed utterances could be traced back to the input the children receive, suggesting
that children extract lexical knowledge from their environment. Additionally, tracing back
patterns within each child was more successful than tracing back to the other child’s
corpus, indicating that each child has their own set of patterns which depends verymuch
on their individual input. As such, these findings can shed new light on the interplay of
the two developing grammars in bilingual children and their individual differences.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:84455 |
| Date | 31 March 2023 |
| Creators | Endesfelder Quick, Antje, Hartmann, Stefan |
| Publisher | Frontiers Research Foundation |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 1664-1078, 682838 |
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