Language Contact in Bilingual Two-Year-Olds and Code-Switching: Language Encounters of a Different Kind?

Abstract

Language contact in the speech of children acquiring two languages simultaneously has been claimed to be qualitatively different from that of older more mature bilingual speakers, that is, of their code-switching. This article argues for the position that these patterns of language contact are in fact language encounters of the same kind. The grammatical properties of the young bilingual child's mixed utterances must be analyzed in light of the pragmatic dimensions of language use. Moreover, the type of mixing that occurs may be the result of a general imbalance in language input. Such an imbalance may affect language processing resulting in language dominance. Finally, current work in code-switching, which delineates constraints on language contact, also lends support to the stand that there is no qualitative difference between the mixing patterns of young bilingual two-year-olds and that of more mature bilingual speakers.