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Code-switching in parents' everyday speech to bilingual infants
Lena V Kremin1,2, Julia Alves1, Adriel John Orena3
1Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Canada.
Journal of Child Language
|May 19, 2021
Summary
Bilingual parents infrequently code-switch when talking to infants, but this behavior increases as infants grow. Parents use code-switching to aid understanding and teach new words, supporting bilingual language development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
Background:
- Code-switching is prevalent in bilingual communities.
- Limited research exists on bilingual parents' code-switching with infants.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the frequency and patterns of infant-directed code-switching.
- To understand the reasons behind bilingual parents' code-switching.
Main Methods:
- Audio recordings from 21 French-English bilingual families in Montreal.
- Recordings captured at infant ages of 10 and 18 months.
- Analysis of day-long, at-home speech samples.
Main Results:
- Infant-directed code-switching rates were low, increasing from 7 to 28 instances per hour between 10 and 18 months.
- Parents code-switched more between than within sentences, a pattern more pronounced at 18 months.
- Primary motivations included enhancing infant comprehension and vocabulary acquisition.
Conclusions:
- Bilingual parents' code-switching increases with infant age.
- Code-switching strategies appear to support bilingual language acquisition.
- Findings offer insights into language development in bilingual infants.
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