Code-Switching or Code-Mixing? Tiwi Children's Use of Language Resources in a Multilingual Environment

Abstract

This chapter analyses the language used by children on the Tiwi Islands with reference to current theories around bilingualism and code-switching. The Tiwi Islands (northern Australia) are a complex linguistic area with Modern Tiwi, English and Kriol, an English-lexified creole, being commonly spoken. At the preschool stage of the children’s linguistic development, none of these languages appears to be a dominant matrix language as described by Myers-Scotton and Jake (Linguistics 33, 981–1024, 1995; International Journal of Bilingualism 4(1), 1–8, 2000). We argue that children can do more than just code-switch and instead utilise a basic, fairly uniform grammar alongside a repertoire of lang..