Code-switching in the speech of a balanced infant bilingual and early talker.

This article presents a longitudinal case study examining code-switching in the speech of Phoebe, a balanced English-Greek infant bilingual and early talker, from approximately 9 months to 2 years and 4 months of age. The study investigates the relationship between Phoebe's developing grammatical competence and her use of code-switching, finding that as her syntax and pragmatic skills advanced, her code-switching evolved from situational, attention-getting switches to more sophisticated, discourse-related functions such as clarification, emphasis, negotiation, and quoting. Phoebe's code-switching was rule-governed, constrained by the grammars of English and Greek, and not due to lexical gaps or lack of linguistic resources; notably, no early mixing of function words was observed. The findings suggest that early balanced bilingualism and early syntactic development facilitate adult-like pragmatic use of code-switching in infant bilinguals.