Bilingualism is nowadays a common condition, being most native children, in Spanish-Catalan communities, simultaneous bilinguals. These children experience a similar amount of exposure to both languages. As regards linguistic characteristics, Spanish and Catalan are Romance languages with a very similar morphosyntax and a high degree of correspondence, which has been estimated to be 76% (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013).

Due to these reasons, it is usual for adults to switch from one language to the other during a conversation. In very small children, it is also very usual to observe language mixing with the same person and/or in the same communicative setting. This conforms a specific and very interesting bilingual context to study code-switching (alternate languages between sentences in a conversation) and code-mixing (alternate languages between words in the same sentence) in a native and balanced bilingual sample of children with language difficulties (Tay, 1989). To date, very few studies have attemped to do so (for instance see Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simon & Erikson, 2009) and none has been carried out with bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI.

In the present work, we aimed to know if bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with language difficulties show different code-switching and code-mixing patterns than children without language difficulties. We departed from Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simon and Erikson (2009) who did not report a differential pattern of code-switching in bilingual unbalanced English-Spanish 6-year old children. It is worthy of note however that in their study, language dominance did play a role in code-switching being the switches from the non-dominant language to the dominant one. Given that children in our study were balanced Spanish-Catalan bilinguals, we do not expect code-switching related to language-dominance and we do not predict a differential pattern of code-switching between groups. However, given that Spanish and Catalan are both Romance languages, both groups might differ in terms of their language mixing, as a result of an inhibitory deficit in bilingual children with SLI that would not be present in their bilingual age-matched peers (see Genesee, Paradis & Crago, 2004). This inhibitory deficit would only be evident with languages involving a high degree of correspondence, as it is the case of Spanish-Catalan. We also expect language mixing in bilingual children with SLI to attenuate over time because of grammatical improvement.

In order to test this hypothesis, we followed 19 Spanish-Catalan bilingual children with SLI from 8 to 12 years old. All children in the study group fulfilled the established criteria for diagnosing children with SLI at 5;6 years (Leonard, 1998; Stark & Tallal, 1981). Children with SLI were paired with 19 age-matched controls, who were also Spanish-Catalan bilinguals.

Children were audio recorded while they produced an oral narrative task: a story telling task from 'Frog, where are you?' (Mayer, 1969). The language of assessment during the task was chosen by the children and the interviewer adapted his/her language according to the children's preferences.

Some examples of SLI productions with code-mixing and code-switching were:

(1) *CHI: el nen i el ca estan mirant la rana i la seva mare li ha dit que s'acostés (Catalan: ficar al llit) i la rana mentre estaven dormint ha anat a sa seva casa. [The child and the dog were looking at the frog and his mother has said him that s'acostés (English:went to bed) and the frog, while they were sleeping, went home].

%lang: cat

*CHI: xxx buscaron por todo pero no la encontraron [= they searched everywhere but they did not find her].

%lang: spa

Some examples of age controls' productions with code-mixing or code-switching were:

(2) *CHI: Después no s´havien enterat que n´hi havia un montón [Catalan: munt] d´abelles. [Then, they did not notice that there were a montón (English: a lot of) bees].

 In the present work, we discuss both code-mixing and code-switching in SLI as compared to age-matched peers in light of current theories of bilingualism and language impairment. Finally, we draw several clinical considerations for educational settings in light of the observed results.

References

Genesee, F., Paradis, J., Crago, M.B. (2004). Dual Language Development & Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism & Second Language Learning. Baltimore, Maryland: Brookes.

Gutiérrez Clellen V.F., Cereijido, G.S. (2009). Codeswithing in bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment. International Journal of Bilingualism.

Leonard, L. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Massachusetts: MIT Press (MA).

Lewis, P., Simons, G., & Fennig, C. (2013). Ethnologue. Dallas: SIL International.

Mayer, M. Frog, where are you?. New York, NY: 1969.

Stark, R.E., & Tallal, P. (1981). Selection of Children with Specific Language Deficits. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46(2), 114–122.

Tay, M.W.J. (1989). Code switching and code mixing as a communicative strategy in multilingual discourse. World Englishes, 8(3), 407–417.