Jul 18
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Genesee/Nicoladis:2009
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In which shapes does code-mixing appear, to which extend are
grammatical properties mixed?

In how far might the typological relatedness between two
simultaneously acquired languages impact the linguistic development of
BFL learners? E.g., if two languages exhibit more salient differences,
the child could have greater difficulties acquiring them.

In how far do different types of code-mixing (e.g., inter-utterance
vs. intra-utterance) provide insights into the cognitive processes
concerning bilingual language use?

While I understand this paper is not trying to make general
overarching claims about dual language acquisition and is rather
reviewing existing studies, it appears that in most experiments which
examine the same research question, there are often results which
contradict each other. (eg. p9-10, when testing word segmentation
abilities of french-english bilinguals vs english-welsh). I don't
think it's ever possible to generalize results across all bilingual
language acquirers - as evident, the experiment results depend not
only on the languages being studied but also on individual factors of
the language learners. There are many factors which cannot be
controlled, so I don’t know how useful it is to try to investigate
dual-language acquisition in a general sense.

One section talks about the bilingual child's ability to switch
between languages based on their communication partner. If the child
is speaking in the 'inappropriate language', they can recognize
unspecified feedback that they should switch languages. I wonder how
much of this ability is rather context or location specific. For
example, perhaps the kid knows that Estonian and English are both
spoken at home, but at the grocery store people only speak
English. How would they react or which language would they 'choose'
with a stranger in their home environment (eg. Would they rely on the
location or the relationship with the stranger to choose the
language?).

What is the the theory/hypothesis around the lexicon of the
bilinguals? Is it a single lexicon handling everything or that there
are multiple lexicon sub-units that interact with each other during
the acquisition and comprehension?