Analysis of Spanish and English speech in a new immigrant community of Latinos in Georgia, USA, shows that Spanish and English pattern differently. There is a higher frequency of Spanish sentences containing English words than English sentences containing Spanish words. But the reverse is true of grammatical influence without mixing words. There…

Bilinguals spontaneously switch languages in conversation even though laboratory studies reveal robust cued language switching costs. The authors investigated how voluntary-switching costs might differ when switches are voluntary. Younger (Experiments 1-2) and older (Experiment 3) Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures in 3 conditions: (a)…

Analyzes bilingual lexemes and morphemes of English-origin loanwords from a Louisiana corpus of 22 French/English speakers. Data suggest that examining borrowing beyond the word level reveals a highly complex interplay of often competing and overlapping grammars. (Author/VWL)

Bilingual speech requires that the language of utterances be selected prior to articulation. Past research has debated whether the language of speaking can be determined in advance of speech planning and, if not, the level at which it is eventually selected. We argue that the reason that it has been difficult to come to an agreement about language…

Despite individual differences, all bilinguals share the ability to act in their native language, in their second language, and to switch back and forth between the two languages they know (Van Hell, 1998). Chinese is the largest Asian American ethnic group in the United States. Their use of code-switching is an increasingly important issue in…

The focus of this paper is on speakers' rationalisations of their everyday linguistic choices as members of a multilingual academic department in the US. Given the monolingual macro-context, the myriad of native languages spoken by participants, and the professional stake in language competence, the question of how speakers arrive at language…

This review of research considers the occurrence and function of Spanish discourse markers and other particles in indigenous speech. I discuss important research that has examined these phenomena and refer to studies of bilingual discourse markers in other non-indigenous language contact situations to address unresolved issues concerning the form…

Spanish/English bilingual 5 to 11-year-old children were interviewed in both languages to assess the reliability of their language background self-ratings. (CM)

Examines code-switching and code-mixing behavior of a child learning English and Cantonese simultaneously. The choice of code was dependant on socialization, and code-mixing was dependent on base language. (14 references) (LT)

Language contact in the speech of children acquiring two languages simultaneously has been claimed to be qualitatively different from that of older or more mature bilingual speakers. This article argues for the position that these patterns of language contact are encounters of the same kind. (Author/VWL)

This paper addresses bilingual children's speech in relation to data from a case study of a child in Wales acquiring English and Spanish between the ages of 1 and 3 years to establish how language choice and code-switching can be recognized in young children. Data is reviewed from the one-word stage, the early two-word combination, and the…

A study of code-switching in the classroom language use of a group of Ohio third graders used as data over 17 hours of conversation taped in September through December during structured small-group lessons, informal conversations, whole-class lessons, and peer teaching of English to monolingual and Spanish-dominant children. The group included…

Discusses and criticizes the monolingual view of bilingualism, which holds that the bilingual is two monolinguals in one person. Proposes, instead, a view which holds that a bilingual has a unique, specific linguistic configuration. Examines a number of areas in bilingual research that are affected by this different view. (SED)

This study investigated the degree to which Portuguese students (n=100) educated in France switched or mixed languages in a written essay. Subjects were told to express themselves liberally in either or both languages. A linguistic history was also taken for each student. The measures were administered in a French-language school, and instructions…

Examines the role of grammatical prerequisites in code switching in young bilingual children. Grammatical constraints are not violated in the earliest uses of mixing. Code switching occurs early in life within these constraints when a certain kind of grammatical knowledge is accessible and functional categories are implemented in the child's…