The study of language contact and child bilingual speech in communities of northern Vietnam

Aims and objectives/Research questions: The study evaluated mixed-language sentences from a population of first grade bilingual children to better understand Cross-Language Interaction in different aspects of bilingual ability. Methodology: Individual assessment elicited responses from participants in both languages they speak, Vietnamese and Thái, based on a graphic display of narrative genre, one story representation for each language. Data and analysis: Children’s bilingual codeswitching responses were analyzed for grammatical well-formedness in constituents where the two languages come into contact. In addition, a significant difference appeared in language choice for bilingual speech between the Vietnamese and Thái assessment settings. Findings/conclusions: Consistent patterns of alternation in bilingual speech between Vietnamese and Thái constituents revealed the ability by children to separate the two language systems. Discussion of the above mentioned difference in language choice in mixed-language passages points to important opportunities for future research on language shift. Originality: The study is the first analysis of bilingual speech in this age group that examines the language contact between Vietnamese and one of the official minority languages of the country. Significance/implications: The study of bilingual speech in young children is important because language contact and dual-language processing coincide with preschool child language development. For this age group, the competence that is revealed in switching, alternation, substitution and insertion is related to other bilingual competences.