Recycling constructional patterns: The role of chunks in early bilingual acquisition

Koch, Nikolas ; Endesfelder Quick, Antje und Hartmann, Stefan (2025): Recycling constructional patterns: The role of chunks in early bilingual acquisition. In: International Journal of Bilingualism: pp. 1-21 [Forthcoming]

Abstract

Aims and Objectives:

Over the last decades, usage-based research into child language acquisition has shown that multi-word units play a key role in child language acquisition. This paper sets out to explore the role of multi-word units in the bilingual speech of two German-English bilingual children, focusing on their code-mixing and starting from the hypothesis that code-mixed utterances can be accounted for with the help of constructional patterns that are in turn abstracted away from recurrent multi-word units.

Approach:

We used the Chunk-Based Learner (CBL), a computational model developed by Stewart McCauley and Morten Christiansen.

Data and Analysis:

We applied the CBL to longitudinal data from two children growing up bilingually with the same language pair (German-English) but notably different input situations, to detect recurrent multi-word units in the data.

Conclusions:

The study shows that both monolingual and code-mixed utterances are built from the same constructional patterns, highlighting the crucial role of chunks in language acquisition. Although code-mixed utterances appear highly creative, they largely rely on fixed, formulaic patterns similar to those found in monolingual speech. This finding supports the usage-based approach, suggesting that chunk-based learning is fundamental across different language acquisition contexts.

Originality:

Using a strictly bottom-up approach allows us to identify recurrent chunks that are used as “building blocks” of early child language, including, importantly, code-mixed utterances.

Significance:

Our study adds to previous research emphasizing the role of multi-word units in early bilingual acquisition and contributes to ongoing efforts to pinpoint the way in which constructional patterns emerge from multi-word units in more detail.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Keywords: Chunks; bilingual language acquisition; usage-based approach; code-mixing; language modeling
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 1 > German Studies > Linguistics; Languages and Literatures > Department 1 > German Studies > German as a second language; Languages and Literatures > Department 1 > German as a Foreign Language
• Subjects: 400 Language > 410 Linguistics; 400 Language > 420 English and Old English languages; 400 Language > 430 German and related languages
• ISSN: 1756-6878 ; 1367-0069
• Annotation: OnlineFirst
• DFG: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - 504095269
• DFG: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - 496468900