Formal features in child and adult code-mixing

  1. Juana M. Liceras 1
  2. Raquel Fernández Fuertes 2
  1. 1 University of Ottawa
  2. 2 Universidad de Valladolid
Revista:
Cuadernos de Lingüística
  1. Fábregas Alfaro, Antonio (coord.)
  2. Gil Laforga, Irene (ed. lit.)
  3. O'Neill, Paul (ed. lit.)

ISSN: 1137-7267

Año de publicación: 2005

Número: 12

Páginas: 139-154

Tipo: Artículo

DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Cuadernos de Lingüística

Resumen

In this paper we address the issue of the differences and similarities between the mental representation of language in the native bilingual child, the native bilingual adult and the non-native adult. We will show that the comparativo priorities for the specification of uninterpretable features in a given pair of languages which are already present in the emergent bilingual grammar are carried out to the adult bilingual grammar but do not show up in the case of the non-native grammar. We will further show that in functional- lexical DP code-mixings, child and adult English/Spanish bilingual production data reveal a clear-cut preference for the Spanish D, without showing any specific preference for ‘gender matching’ ítems (those where the gender feature of the Spanish D agrees with the one of the Spanish translation equivalent of the English Noun). We will finally show that when processing code-switched English/Spanish or Spanish/English DPs, L1 Spanish speakers and non-native speakers share a preference for the English D followed by a preference for the default Spanish gender, the masculino. However, in the case of the L1 Spanish speakers, this preference is overridden by the ‘gender matching’ option described above. These results, we argüe, are consistent with an extended versión of the Grammatical Features Spell-out Hypothesis according to which in the process of activating the features of the two grammars, the bilingual child, who relies on the two lexicons, will make code-mixing choices which will favor the functional categories containing the largest array of uninterpretable features.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • ARIAS, R. AND U. LAKSHMANAN. (2003): Code-switching in a Spanish-Englihs bilingual child: a communicationr resource? Paper presented at the The 4lh. International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB4), Arizona State University.
  • AZUMA, S. (1993): The frame-content hypothesis in speech production: evidence from intrasentential code- switching. Linguistics 31: 1071-1093.
  • BELAZI, H., E. RUBIN and A. J. TORIBIO (1994): ‘Code-switching and X-bar theory: the functional head constraint’, Linguistic Inquiry 25: 221-237.
  • CHOMSKY, N. (1995): The minimalistprogram. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • CHOMSKY, N. (1998): ‘Minimalist inquiries: the framework.’ MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 15. [also as 2000 in R. Martin, D. Michaels, and J. Uriagereka, eds., Step by step: essays on minimalist syntax in honor or HowardLasnik. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press]
  • DEUCHAR, M. and S. QUAY (2000): Bilingual acquisition: theoretical implications of a case study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • DI SCIULLO, A. M., P. MUYSKEN and R. SINGH (1986): ‘Government and code-switching’, Journal of Linguistics 22: 1-24.
  • FANTINI, A. E. (1985): Language acquisition of a bilingual child: a sociolinguistic perspective (to age ten). Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
  • FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES, R., J. M. LICERAS and K. T. SPRADLIN (2000-2005): Bilingualism (English/Spanish) as a first language: a case study of identical twins.. Research Project. University of Vallado 1 id / University of Ottawa.
  • FRANCESCHINA, F. (2001): ‘Morphological or syntactic déficits in near-native speakers? An assessment of some current proposals’. Second Language Research 17 (3): 213-247.
  • HALLE, M. and A. MARANTZ (1993): ‘Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection’. In K. Hale and J. Keyser (eds.). The View from Building 20, 111-176. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • JAKE, J. L., C. MYERS-SCOTTON and S. GROSS (2002): ‘Making a minimalist approach to codeswitching work: Adding the matrix language’. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 5 (1): 69-91.
  • JOSHI, A (1985): ‘Processing of sentences with intrasentential code-switching’. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunen and A. Zwicky, eds. Natural language parsing: psychological, computational and theoretical perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • KÓPPE, R. and J. MEISEL (1995): ‘Code-switching in bilingual First language acquisition’. In L. Milroy and P. Muysken, eds. One speaker, two languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • LANZA, E. (1993): ‘Language mixing and language dominance in bilingual first language acquisition’. In E. V. Clark, ed., The Proceedings of the Twentyfourth Annual Child Language Research Forum, 197-208. Stanford, Cal.: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
  • LICERAS, J. M. (2002): ‘Uninterpretable features in bilingual acquisition and the issue of language dominance’. Paper presented at the European Research Conference Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics. Corinth, Greece, 1 - 6 June, 2002.
  • LICERAS, J. M., K. T. SPRADLIN and R. FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES (Forthcoming): Bilingual early functional-lexical mixing and the activation of formal features. International Journal of Bilingualism 2005.
  • LICERAS, J. M., K. T. SPRADLIN, C. SENN, M. SIKORSKA, R. FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES and E. ALVÁREZ DE LA FUENTE (2003): ‘Second language acquisition and bilingual competence: The Grammatical Features Spell-out Hypothesis’. European Association of Second Language Acquisition (EUROSLA-13). Edinburgh, United Kingdom, September 19 -21, 2003.
  • LINDHOLM, K. J. and A. M. PADILLA (1978): ‘Language mixing in bilingual children’. Journal of Child Language 5: 327-335.
  • LUMSDEN, J. (1992): ’Underspecification in grammatical and natural gender’. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 469- 486.
  • MACSWAN, J. (2000): ’The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: evidence from intrasententialcode-switching’. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3 (1): 37-54.
  • MYERS-SCOTTON, C. and J. L. JAKE. (2001) ‘Explaining aspects of code-switching and their implications. In J. L. Nicol (ed.), One mind, two languages: bilingual language processing, 84-116. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
  • PESETSKY, D. and E. TORREGO (2001): ’T-to-C Movement: causes and consequences’. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
  • POPLACK, S. (1980): ‘Sometimes Til start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: toward a typology of code-switching’. Linguistics 18: 581-618.
  • ROCA, I. (1989): ‘The organization of grammatical gender’. Transactions of the Philological Society 87: 1- 32
  • TAESCHNER, T. (1983): The sun isfeminine. Berlín: Springer-Verlag.
  • SPRADLIN, K. T., J. M. LICERAS and R. FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES (2003a): ‘Functional-lexical code- mixing patterns as evidence for language dominance in young bilingual children: a minimalist approach’. In J. M. Liceras, H. Zobl and H. Goodluck (eds.), L2 Links: Proceedings of the 2002 Generative Approaches lo Second Language Acquisition (GASLA-6) Conference. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • SPRADLIN, K. T., J. M. LICERAS and R. FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES (2003b): ‘The “Grammatical Features Spell-out Hypothesis” as a diagnostic for bilingual competence’. The 41*1 International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB4). Arizona State University. Tempe, Arizona, April 30 - May 3, 2003.
  • SWAIN, M. (1972): Bilingualism as a first language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California at Irvine.
  • SWAIN, M. and M. WESCHE (1975): ‘Linguistic interaction: case study of a bilingual child’. Language Sciences October: 17-22.
  • TORIBIO, A. J. (2001): ‘On the emergence of bilingual code-switching competence’. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4 (3): 203-231.
  • WHITE, L., E. VALENZUELA, M. KOZLOWSKA-MACGREGOR and Y. I. LEUNG. (2004): ‘Gender and number agreement in non-native Spanish’. Applied Psycholinguistics 25: 105-133.
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet