Priming of Frames and Slots in Bilingual Children’s Code-Mixing: A Usage-Based Approach

This article investigates the role of direct input in the code-mixing of three bilingual children aged 2–4 years acquiring English as one language, and either German, Polish, or Finnish as the other. From a usage-based perspective, it is assumed that early children’s utterances are item-based and that they contain many lexically fixed patterns. To account for such patterns, the traceback method has been developed to test the hypothesis that children’s utterances are constructed on the basis of a limited inventory of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. We apply this method to the code-mixed utterances, suggesting that much of the code-mixing occurs within frame-and-slot patterns, such as Was ist X? as in Was ist breakfast muesli? “What is breakfast muesli?” We further analyzed each code-mixed utterance in terms of priming. Our findings suggest that much of the early code-mixing is based on concrete lexically fixed patterns which are subject to input occurring in immediately prior speech, either the child’s own or that of her caregivers

A Crosslinguistic Study of Child Code-Switching within the Noun Phrase: A Usage-Based Perspective

This paper aims to investigate whether language use can account for the differences in code-switching within the article-noun phrase in children exposed to English and German, French and Russian, and English and Polish. It investigates two aspects of language use: equivalence and segmentation. Four children’s speech is derived from corpora of naturalistic interactions recorded between the ages of two and three and used as a source of the children’s article-noun phrases. We demonstrate that children’s CS cannot be fully explained by structural equivalence in each two languages: there is CS in French-Russian although French does, and Russian does not, use articles. We also demonstrate that language pairs which use higher numbers of articles types, and therefore have more segmented article-noun phrases, are also more open to switching. Lastly, we show that longitudinal use of monolingual articles-noun phrases corresponds with the trends in the use of bilingual article-noun phrases. The German-English child only starts to mix English articles once they become more established in monolingual combinations while the French-Russian child ceases to mix French proto-articles with Russian nouns once target articles enter frequent use. These findings are discussed in the context of other studies which report code-switching across different language pairs

A Usage-Based Approach to Metaphor Identification and Analysis in Polish child speech

As metaphors are difficult to elicit through experimental tools, especially at a young age, it has been proposed that corpora of naturalistic interactions between children and their primary caregivers present an alternative avenue for accessing the language of very young speakers (Gaskins, Falcone & Rundblad, 2023). However, this approach has been developed with English data in mind, adding to the predominantly Anglocentric nature of child language research. The current article demonstrates how the approach can be adapted for use with children acquiring Polish and, by extension, other inflected Slavic languages, where metaphors are often encoded word-internally. The article justifies the motivations which have shaped the development of this adaptation and demonstrates what metaphors it has unearthed in the speech of a Polish-speaking two- to five-year-old child, and her primary caregivers. It is argued that the approach could carry a significant potential in future research if applied to densely sampled data from monolingual acquisition in Polish settings

Embodiment in directive sequences:the case of triadic interactions in a Polish-English bilingual family

Abstract Aims: This study provides a multimodal conversation analytic account of directive sequences used in the presence of a child aged 1;8–2;4 growing up in an English-dominant environment and acquiring Polish as a heritage language. Design: The video recorded data are drawn from naturally occurring interactions, in which the child is present when one caregiver produces a directive turn (request, proposal, or suggestion) and another one carries it out in an embodied fashion. Analysis: The analysis focuses on the sequential unfolding of the triadic interactions, the two adults’ and child’s verbal turns, gaze direction, manual actions, and handling of objects. Findings: Although the child is not always verbally active in the directive sequences, she observes them and sometimes takes part, either through bodily actions or verbal utterances. The multimodal analysis also shows that even if the child’s verbal activity might indicate understanding a prior turn and responding to it, the child may not actually be orienting to the conversation. Observing adults carrying out heritage language directive sequences is only possible when the child is interacting with two speakers of her heritage language, or a speaker of that language and a person who has some passive knowledge of it. Seeing adults’ mutual social actions offers the child a social environment, in which she can get a rich linguistic model and also observe the benefits of using the heritage language in everyday interactional situations. Originality: This is the first study to offer a multimodal conversation analysis of directive sequences in which one adult produces the directive and another adult responds to it in the presence of a child acquiring a heritage language

Priming of Frames and Slots in Bilingual Children’s Code-Mixing: A Usage-Based Approach

This article investigates the role of direct input in the code-mixing of three bilingual children aged 2–4 years acquiring English as one language, and either German, Polish, or Finnish as the other. From a usage-based perspective, it is assumed that early children’s utterances are item-based and that they contain many lexically fixed patterns. To account for such patterns, the traceback method has been developed to test the hypothesis that children’s utterances are constructed on the basis of a limited inventory of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. We apply this method to the code-mixed utterances, suggesting that much of the code-mixing occurs within frame-and-slot patterns, such as Was ist X? as in Was ist breakfast muesli? “What is breakfast muesli?” We further analyzed each code-mixed utterance in terms of priming. Our findings suggest that much of the early code-mixing is based on concrete lexically fixed patterns which are subject to input occurring in immediately prior speech, either the child’s own or that of her caregivers

Priming of Frames and Slots in Bilingual Children’s Code-Mixing: A Usage-Based Approach

This article investigates the role of direct input in the code-mixing of three bilingual children aged 2–4 years acquiring English as one language, and either German, Polish, or Finnish as the other. From a usage-based perspective, it is assumed that early children’s utterances are item-based and that they contain many lexically fixed patterns. To account for such patterns, the traceback method has been developed to test the hypothesis that children’s utterances are constructed on the basis of a limited inventory of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. We apply this method to the code-mixed utterances, suggesting that much of the code-mixing occurs within frame-and-slot patterns, such as Was ist X? as in Was ist breakfast muesli? “What is breakfast muesli?” We further analyzed each code-mixed utterance in terms of priming. Our findings suggest that much of the early code-mixing is based on concrete lexically fixed patterns which are subject to input occurring in immediately prior speech, either the child’s own or that of her caregivers

Slot-and-Frame Schemas in the Language of a Polish- and English-Speaking Child: The Impact of Usage Patterns on the Switch Placement

How does the bilingual child assemble her first multiword constructions? Can switch placement in bilingual combinations be explained by language usage? This study traces the emergence of frozen and semi-productive patterns throughout the diary collection period (0;10.10⁻2;2.00) to document the acquisition of constructions. Subsequently the focus falls on most frequently produced monolingual and bilingual combinations captured through 30 video recordings (1;10.16⁻2;5.11) which are linked to the diary data to confirm their productivity. First, we verify that like in monolingual development, frequency-based piecemeal acquisition of constructions can be reproduced in our bilingual diary data: in the child’s earliest combinations 87% are deemed as semi-productive slot-and-frame patterns. Second, video recordings show that productivity, understood as a function of type frequency, plays a role in determining the switch placement in early bilingual combinations only to some extent. A more accurate explanation for why frames from one language take slot fillers from another is their autonomous use and semantic independence. We also highlight limitations of input: while the child was raised with two languages separated in the input, she continued to switch languages which suggests that switching is developmental