Bilingualism, Monolingualism, and Code Acquisition

2005

Code-Switching is a phenomenon in which “speakers rely on juxtaposition of grammatically distinct subsystems to generate conversational inferences” according to Gumperz (1982:97). The broad use of code-switching in diverse contexts and with at least two languages in contact has made this linguistic device be one of the most studied behavioural features of bilinguals’ speech (Gregori and Alcantud.2011). Additionally, code-switching, seems to have an important communicative function, that is why it is a very interesting aspect of sociolinguistics to be researched.Nowadays, the development of educational provision is reaching more and more social strata. This fact, together with a wider use of new technologies and globalization, has “served to accentuate our sense of a visibly and audibly multilingual modern world” (Milroy and Muysken 1995:1). One of the consequences of this modernization has been the incorporation of second languages in the subject syllabus at earlier and earlier ages...

2013

2007

Journal of French Language Studies, 2008

ABSTRACTMost studies of child bilingualism (Döpke, 1992; Fantini, 1985; Genishi, 1999; Gumperz, 1977, 1982; McClure, 1977; Myers-Scotton, 1993a; Romaine, 1994) concern children raised in a bilingual language community. The present study concerns a four-year-old child in an English-speaking community raised in an environment where his mother only spoke French to him. Two questions were raised: Can a child raised by a non-native parent produce situational code-switching triggered by topic changes? Are there additional topics or roles to add to the previous literature that trigger a young English-French bilingual child to code-switch? The data in this study showed that the child produced situational code-switching. Two novel hypotheses for code-switching were also found: leadership and expression of emotions and sensations. This case-study is important for the field of code-switching in the environment of a non-native parent raising a child in a second language.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1990

1988

1974