Two bilingual children's code switching in relation to interlocutor language choice

Abstract

Two Japanese-English bilingual children's code switching (CS) is studied from formal and functional points of view. Whether the manipulation of the parental language choice strategies affect the subjects' language use pattern or not is examined along with the significant formal and functional features. For the formal aspect of CS, the "equivalence constraint", "free morpheme constraint," and "dual structure principles" are examined. The first two are not supported. None of these constraints are suggested for typologically different languages such as Japanese and English. For the functional aspects of CS, interpretation is made with reference to pragmatic considerations. It is found that the tendency for language choice to be made depending on the interlocutor, and conscious parental language choice strategies do not have so much to do with these children's language choice.