Code switching (Linguistics)

Code-switching is a common feature of bilingual language use and has multiple factors that influence the frequency and type of code-switching. 56 Spanish-English bilingual children recorded sessions of Spanish-designated and English-designated interactions with a caregiver at 2.5 and 3.5 years. These sessions were transcribed and coded for all code-switched utterances. At both ages, we found: (1) Children switched to English more frequently than they switched to Spanish. (2) Their degree of English dominance was a positive predictor of their frequency of switching to English, but a negative predictor of their frequency of switching to Spanish. Between 2.5 and 3.5 years, children became more English dominant, and their rate of switching to English increased while their rate of switching to Spanish decreased. The present findings suggest that the strongest influence on bilingual children’s code-switching is their relative proficiency in their two languages and as that proficiency changes, their code-switching changes.

The current study addressed several questions about the use of language intermingling in child-directed speech and its influence on children's English and Spanish language acquisition on children's language code-switching, Participants were 65 children (Mean age=30.93 months, SD=0.44, 28 boys and 37 girls) who had been exposed to English and Spanish from birth and for whom at least one parent was a native Spanish speaker.... Measures of the children's lexical, grammatical, receptive, and productive language development in English and in Spanish were collected concurrently.... Consistent with sociolinguistic theories that propose that language separation is necessary for heritage language maintenance, children who were exposed to more language intermingling were more English-dominant. Both sensitivity to the language context and children's language dominance were related to children's production of mixed utterances. Children code-switched more when speaking in their less proficient language and when in the context of minority language use.