As shown in
Figure 1,
Figure 2,
Figure 3,
Figure 4,
Figure 5,
Figure 6,
Figure 7,
Figure 8 and
Figure 9 and
Table 2, the bilingual children’s code-mixing is asymmetrical: they mix more when interacting in Cantonese than in English. In principle this asymmetry could be related to language dominance: it has been proposed that children are more likely to code-mix when using their weaker language [
15]. Alternatively, the asymmetry could be derived from the input, as discussed in
Section 4.2 below.
4.1. Comparison of Children with Different Language Dominance Patterns
There is evidence that the overall preference for mixing in the Cantonese context is modulated by language dominance. Language dominance is based on MLU for the two languages, following [
10]. The 1P1L children have Cantonese as dominant language, except for Charlotte who was assessed as English-dominant and Kathryn whose MLU data do not show a dominant language [
10] (pp. 73–81).
Among the 1P1L children, while both Cantonese-dominant and English-dominant children mix more elements from English into Cantonese, the English-dominant child Charlotte mixes more than Cantonese-dominant children in Cantonese contexts.
Table 3 shows the ratio of mixing in the Cantonese context to that in the English context.
The mean ratio is around 2:1 in Cantonese-dominant children, but over 5:1 in the English-dominant child, Charlotte. All the children are influenced by the distribution of code-mixing in the input (code-mixing being prevalent in the Cantonese input across the board). In addition to the input factor, Charlotte has further motivations for mixing when speaking Cantonese: she knows words in English that she does not know in Cantonese, and/or she can access the English term faster or more easily than the Cantonese one.
4.2. Comparison of Children Growing up with Different Language Strategies
The general pattern whereby children mix more in the Cantonese context (regardless of language dominance) can be attributed to the input. This pattern is modulated by the input conditions, however.
Table 4 compares mixing rates in children from one parent-one language and one parent-two language families.
It can again be seen that all children mix more in the Cantonese context than in the English context. However, the two children from one parent-two language families mix twice as often as the 1P1L group (4.9% versus 2.5%) in the Cantonese context. They also show a ratio of 7:1 between the Cantonese and English contexts, versus 2.5:1 in the 1P1L group.
4.3. The Role of Input
To recapitulate the main finding so far: the children mix more frequently in the Cantonese context than the English context. This generalization is in accord with the input, as suggested in a case study by [
16]: the parents are observed to code-mix commonly when addressing the children in Cantonese, and more rarely when speaking English. It is not always possible to quantify this difference in the input: for the majority of the corpus data, parental input is not systematically available since the Cantonese recording was conducted by research assistants rather than the parents. In the corpora for Kasen and Darren, however, substantial samples of incidental child-directed speech were recorded and transcribed, allowing comparisons to be made between mixing rates in the parental input and in child production. The results are shown in
Table 5.
In the Cantonese context, Kasen’s father’s speech production shows a high mixing rate of 13.2%, reflecting his use of both languages on a daily basis. His rate of code-mixing closely matches Kasen’s strikingly high mixing rate of 9.4% in the Cantonese context. The mixing rate for Kasen’s father (13.2%) is nine times that of Kasen’s mother (1.4%). This contrast reflects the fact that the mother’s assigned role in the recording context was to elicit Cantonese; thus her mixing rate in the recordings may not be representative of her use of mixing in everyday speech and in child-directed speech outside the recording context. In the English context, both parents of Kasen show lower rates of mixing (0.7% and 0%) which match Kasen’s low mixing rate of 0.9%.
Darren’s much lower rate of mixing (1.1% in the Cantonese context) is consistent with those of his mother and father (0.76% and 1.5%, respectively). The comparison of Kasen and Darren suggests that parental language strategies exert a strong influence on children’s code-mixing rates. While code-mixing is widespread in the community overall, there is also considerable variation within and between families, which is reflected in the children’s mixing behavior.
Qualitatively, most morpho-syntactic patterns of child mixing are also demonstrated in the parents’ data. In (2), the child uses the English verb
claim with the Cantonese particle
faan1 ‘back’ and the father repeats this mixed combination in his response:
2. | CHI: | claim | faan1 | |
| | claim | back | |
| | ‘Claim back.’ |
| FAT: | hai6 laa3, | claim | faan1 | di1 | cin2 |
| | Yes, | claim | back | CL | money |
| | ‘Yes, claim the money back.’ (Darren 3;05;09, Cantonese context (CC)) |
This example is also revealing in terms of parental discourse strategies. The father’s adoption of the mixed form
claim faan1 ‘claim back’ with an English verb and a Cantonese particle produced by the child indicates acceptance of code-mixing. This goes beyond the ‘Move on’ strategy whereby the parent does not react to the child’s use of code-mixing [
8]. In effect, the father in (2) encourages code-mixing by adopting exactly the mixed expression introduced into the discourse by the child.
4.4. Syntactic Categories in Code-Mixing
We now turn to the syntactic categories involved in code-mixing, and the properties of mixed verbs in particular.
Table 6 shows the breakdown of the main syntactic categories inserted in code-mixed utterances. Noun-mixing and verb-mixing types are two primary categories involved in mixing, especially in the Cantonese context. In the English context, sentence-final particles (SFP) such as
aa3 and
laa1 are the most frequently inserted Cantonese items, followed by nouns and verbs.
This pattern matches the general trend observed in language contact situations, where a ‘hierarchy of borrowability’ has been established: nouns > verbs > adjectives [
17] (p. 189). That is, nouns are most readily borrowed, even with superficial contact, whereas borrowing of verbs entails more intensive contact. Several explanations have been offered for this pattern. Semantically, nouns provide reference to new referents, which rarely arises with verbs. Structurally, verbs are more likely to require morphology that may lead to phonological difficulties. Typical cases of noun mixing include the following:
3. | jau5 | go3 | horse | gaa3. |
| have | CL | horse | SFP |
| ‘There is a horse.’ (Timmy 2;03;17, CC) |
4. | sik6 | di1 | apple | |
| eat | CL | apple | |
| ‘Eat some apples.’ (Alicia 2;00;26, CC) |
Note that nouns are inserted in their bare forms: even when the sense is plural as in (4), the bare form apple is used.
When producing English, the most common form of code-mixing is addition of a Cantonese sentence-final particle, as in (5):
5. | | You | tidy | up | laa1 |
| | you | tidy | up | SFP |
| | ‘You tidy up.’ (Kasen 3;06;08, EC) |
The borrowing of Chinese sentence particles in English is also attested in language contact varieties, such as Singapore English [
18].
4.5. Mixed Verbs and the Absence of Light Verb Constructions2
Like nouns, English verbs inserted into a Cantonese frame may be in their bare forms as in (6). However, inflected forms are also used, notably by the English-dominant child Charlotte, as in (7)
3:
6. | Put | nei1 | go3 |
| Put | DET | CL |
| ‘Put this one.’ (Charlotte 2;03;17, CC) |
7. | de1di4 | sleeping | aa3 |
| Daddy | sleeping | SFP |
| ‘Daddy is sleeping.’ (Charlotte 2;10;29, CC) |
Cantonese aspect markers may be attached to English verbs, a common pattern in adult code-mixing [
19]. Thus, when inserting an English verb into a Cantonese utterance, children use Cantonese aspect markers, as (8) and (9) where the perfective marker
zo2 is attached to the verbs
turn and
plant:
8. | dim2gaai2 | turn | zo2? | |
| why | Turn | ASP | |
| ‘Why did it turn?’ (Darren 3;04;18, CC) | |
9. | Hai6 | aa3 | keoi5dei6 | plant-zo2 | go2 | di1 | gaa3 | laa3 |
| Yes | SFP | they | plant-PFV | that | CL | SFP | SFP |
| ‘Yes, they have planted those.’ (Kathryn 3;06;18, CC) |
An inflected English verb may be modified by a Cantonese aspect marker, resulting in double morphological marking:
10. | Broken | zo2 | laa3 |
| Broken | ASP | SFP |
| ‘It was broken.’ (Kasen 3;09;07, CC) |
In the English context, a bare Cantonese verb may be inserted into an English utterance:
11. | I | teoi1 | him |
| I | push | him |
| ‘I push him.’ (Timmy 2;04;07, EC) |
12. | Can’t | hoi1 | the | boat |
| can’t | open | the | boat |
| ‘I can’t open the boat.’ (Charlotte 2;01;22, CC) |
Cantonese verbs with English tense-aspect morphology are rare, but attested occasionally as in kat-ing ‘coughing’, pronounced similarly to English cutting.
Note that in (11) and (12), the children insert the Cantonese verb directly into an English frame, without requiring a light verb such as
do or
make. Similarly, in (6)–(10) the English verb is inserted directly into a Cantonese frame, with aspect marking optional (just as it is in adult Cantonese). This contrasts with many language pairs in which a light verb is introduced to carry inflectional information [
19] (p. 74), [
20,
21]. Such light verb constructions are not attested in the child data, nor have they been described in studies of adult Cantonese-English code-mixing [
19]. The absence of light verb constructions in both child and adult code-mixing appears to reflect typological properties of Cantonese. First, verbs may remain uninflected: bare verb forms are freely allowed in adult Cantonese and occur regularly (regardless of code-mixing) in the children’s developmental English, so that no light verb is required to carry the verbal inflection. In the case of adult mixing, Cantonese serves as the matrix language [
19], so that mixed verbs follow the Cantonese property of allowing uninflected verbs rather than the inflectional requirements of English.
A second typological factor involves the extensive congruence in word order between English and Cantonese. Mixed compound verbs using a light verb typically occur when a verb from a VO language is inserted/incorporated into an OV language [
19] (p. 75). The resulting verbal complex can then assign case to an object on its left, as in the matrix language. Since Cantonese and English are both VO languages, this motivation for mixed light verb constructions is absent
4.
4.6. Verb-Particle Constructions and Innovation
While the main patterns discussed so far are in accordance with those in the adult input, children’s mixing also goes beyond the input. An example involves the insertion of English verb-particle constructions in Cantonese sentences. In the simplest case, a verb-particle combination may be inserted just like a single verb:
13. | Hai6 | mai6 | soeng2 | jiu3 | lie down | aa3? |
| be | NEG.be | want | need | lie down | SFP |
| ‘Do you want to lie down?’ (Charlotte 2;05;19, CC) |
In (13), the child inserts the English verb-particle combination
lie down. This corresponds to the Cantonese equivalent
fan3 dai1 ‘lie down’ in which the verb and particle are also contiguous, forming a verb-particle construction resembling that of English (14):
14. | Ngo5 | soeng2 | fan3 | dai1 | aa3 |
| I | want | lie | down | SFP |
| ‘I want to lie down.’ |
The Cantonese structure (14) and its English counterpart (as seen in the translation of (14)) are closely congruent (see [
22] (p. 243) for discussion). This favours the insertion of the adjacent verb-particle combination into Cantonese, assuming that congruence is a factor in code-mixing [
13,
19] (p. 153).
In a range of more complex cases, code-mixing interacts with the bilingual children’s developmental grammar. In (15) the transitive verb-particle combination
turn off is inserted into a Cantonese frame with a null object understood from the context, consistent with the child’s developmental grammar as well as the target grammar of Cantonese [
10] (p. 146).
15. | Ngo5 | soeng2 | turn | off | aa3 |
| I | want | turn | off | SFP |
| ‘I want to turn it off.’ (Charlotte, 2;04;20, CC) |
Since the object is null, there is no distinction between the ‘split’ order turn it off and the ‘non-split’ order turn off it (which, although ungrammatical in adult English, does occur in Charlotte’s English data).
Some children, however, use the ‘split’ order in code-mixing, inserting the verb and particle on either side of the Cantonese object:
16. | Dim2 | gaai2 | lei5 | throw | ni1 | go3 | away | ge3? |
| how | come | you | throw | this | CL | away | SFP |
| ‘Why are you throwing this away?’ (Kathryn 3;06, CC) |
In the following case Timmy uses the verb-particle combination
slide down in a complex Cantonese construction encoding inability. He adds the Cantonese complement
m4 dou2 ‘not succeed’ to the English verb
slide, then completes the construction by adding the particle
down:
17. | Ji1 | zek3 | slide | m4 | dou2 | down |
| this | CL | slide | not | succeed | down |
| ‘(With) these (shoes on) you can’t slide down.’ (Timmy 2;06, CC) |
In (16) and (17) the children insert the verb-particle using the ‘split’ order which is the preferred order in English, but not in Cantonese [
23]. This pattern as in (16) and (17) is not attested in the parental input, and has not been described in studies of adult code-mixing [
9,
19]. Instead, it appears to be an innovation created by the bilingual children.
Given the congruence between the adjacent (non-split) verb-particle constructions one would expect children’s mixed structures to insert English verb-particle combinations in the non-split order. The ‘split’ constructions in (16) and (17) therefore pose a puzzle. A possible explanation involves cross-linguistic influence, which takes place between the developing grammars, independent of code-mixing. Although the code-mixed construction in (16) and (17) does not match the adult Cantonese order, the bilingual children do occasionally use ‘split’ verb-particle constructions in their Cantonese, as in (18) and (19):
18. | M4 | hou2 | baai2 | keoi5 | dai1 | laa1 | |
| not | good | put | her | down | SFP | |
| ‘Don’t put her down!’ (referring to a child being carried) (Timmy 3;09;09, CC) | |
19. | Lau4 | lei5 | dai1 | hai2 | ji1 | dou6 | hou2-m4-hou2 | aa3? |
| leave | you | down | at | this | place | good-not-good | SFP |
| ‘Is it okay if we leave you behind here?’ (Alicia 3;02;25, CC) |
The verb and particle are separated in
baai2… dai1 ‘put…down’ in (18) and
lau4… dai1 ‘leave…behind’ in (19). This non-target ‘split’ verb-particle construction is not attested in adult Cantonese, which does not allow the pronoun
keoi5 ‘her/him’ in between
baai2 ‘put’ and
dai1 ‘down’ but requires it to be placed after the particle as in
baai2 dai1 keoi5 (literally ‘put down her’). We have argued that the ‘split’ construction in (18) and (19) is influenced by the preferred order of the English counterpart [
10] (p. 216). The code-mixed cases (16) and (17) are thus congruent with the children’s developmental grammar for Cantonese, if not with the target grammar of Cantonese. An implication is that the mixing seen in (16) and (17) is a developmental phenomenon, going beyond the input the children receive.