Mixed NPs in German-English and German-Russian bilingual children
Both cross-linguistic priming methodologies and research on codemixed utterances have been concerned with the nature of the underlying syntactic representations of bilinguals. The present paper investigated code-mixing at the morphosyntactic level (NP) by comparing German-English (G-E) and German- Russian (G-R) bilingual children between the ages of 3;6 and 5;6. Using a language priming paradigm and a monolingual interlocutor in each language, we attempted to elicit mixed NPs from these children. Results showed that G-E bilingual children produced mixed NPs significantly more often than G-R bilinguals, providing support for the importance of structural similarity in this type of mixing. A second finding was that children who were reported as code-mixing at home were significantly more likely to provide answers while children who did not code-mix remained silent. Explanations in terms of individual differences and/or balanced competence are discussed.
