Syntactic aspects of code-switchinging in bilingual Spanish- Swedish children

Sammanfattning: The aim of this essay was to analyze bilingual children in conversation. The essay examinesunder what syntactic circumstances bilingual Spanish / Swedish speaking children codeswitch.The data for this essay is based on recordings of two of the author’s familymembers. The focus is on how bilingual children code-switch, if it is more likely forbilingual children to code-switch when the syntax of two languages are in alignment and ifthere is a dominant language. The collections of recordings are based on real conversationsbetween two bilingual children. The two participants in the study are Spanish and Swedishspeakers; they were born and raised in Sweden with Hispanic parents. The children havebeen exposed to both Spanish and Swedish at home. To be able to obtain the data the authoronly took the most important parts from the transcripts; both audio and video recordingswere made to capture spontaneous conversations between the two brothers. The results showthat the two participants code-switch most frequently at points when the syntax of the twolanguages is in alignment.