Montreal parents’ code-switching patterns when speaking to bilingual infants

Abstract

Code-switching (e.g., “Are you hungry? Est-ce que tu veux une apple?”) is common in bilingual environments and may affect language acquisition, yet little is known about parental code-switching patterns. This is the first study to examine parents’ natural code-switching behaviors. Our findings show that parents do not frequently code-switch when speaking to their infant, and that properties of their code-switching (e.g., syntactic location and apparent reason) shift over the infant’s development.