Spanish/English Bilingual Children in the Southeastern USA: Convergence and Codeswitching

• Published in: The Bilingual review 2007, Vol.28 (2), p.99
• Main Author: Smith, Daniel J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Code Switching (Language); English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Grammar; Hispanic Americans; Immigrants; Morphemes; Second Language Learning; Socioeconomic Background; Spanish Speaking; Standard Spoken Usage
• ISSN: 0094-5366

The fastest growing Hispanic population centers in the United States are currently in the Southeast. In one Georgia community, immigrant children from Mexico, Central America, and South America use Spanish and English together in sentences. This paper compares the bilingual structures of sentences that show codeswitching between Spanish and English and those showing grammatical convergence of Spanish (L1) and English (L2) along with comparisons of the social backgrounds of the speakers who produced the sentences. Codeswitching samples maintain Spanish grammatical patterns, but with English morphemes inserted. Convergence samples show use of all Spanish morphemes, with grammatical influence from English. Codeswitching is more frequent than convergence among children who interact frequently with other Spanish-speaking children and who use Spanish more than English at home. Convergence occurs more frequently than codeswitching when children have fewer interactions in Spanish and more interactions in English as compared to their peers who codeswitch more frequently. Therefore, more interaction in English results in L1 speakers of Spanish being able to keep their Spanish sentences free of English morphemes but not free of English grammar. In contrast, less interaction in English results in L1 speakers of Spanish being able to maintain standard Spanish grammatical patterns in large part free of English grammatical influence but not free of English morphemes. (Contains 5 notes and 2 tables.)