Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Symbols and abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Bilingual first language acquisition: methods and theories
- 3 A new study of bilingual first language acquisition: aims and hypotheses
- 4 Case study of a bilingual child: introduction
- 5 Language choice and Mixed utterances
- 6 The noun phrase
- 7 The verb phrase
- 8 Syntactic analysis
- 9 The morphological and syntactic analyses: a recapitulation
- 10 Metalinguistic behaviour
- 11 Findings and implications
- References
- Appendix
- Index of names
5 - Language choice and Mixed utterances
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Symbols and abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Bilingual first language acquisition: methods and theories
- 3 A new study of bilingual first language acquisition: aims and hypotheses
- 4 Case study of a bilingual child: introduction
- 5 Language choice and Mixed utterances
- 6 The noun phrase
- 7 The verb phrase
- 8 Syntactic analysis
- 9 The morphological and syntactic analyses: a recapitulation
- 10 Metalinguistic behaviour
- 11 Findings and implications
- References
- Appendix
- Index of names
Summary
Language choice
Introduction
In section 4.2 of Chapter 4 an overview was given of the quantitative use of English, Dutch, Mixed and ‘Non-language specific’ utterances by Kate. The question now is: what determines Kate's choice of language? In the small range of literature on the subject, the main determinant of language selection by bilingual children is seen to be the interlocutor (see e.g., Bergman 1976, McClure 1977, Fantini 1978a, Saunders 1982). It seems that in general, bilingual children address their interlocutors in a language they know they will understand and will be able to respond in. McClure (1977: 101), for instance, writes: “Inappropriate choice of language when addressing a monolingual is rare”. To see to what extent Kate is similar to other bilingual children, we decided to categorize each of her utterances in terms of interlocutor and in terms of which language the interlocutor used to address the child. In the following subsection the categorization system will be explained in more detail. After this, the data are analysed and discussed.
The language choice codes
As was mentioned before, the language choice codes consist of three elements. The criteria for deciding on the first element have already been outlined in section 4.2.1.
The second element in the code refers to the language that Kate's utterance was a reaction to. There are two main categories here: initiations and responses.
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- Information
- The Acquisition of Two Languages from BirthA Case Study, pp. 90 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990