Bilingual Child's NP construction?

[Jeff MacSwan]

Dear Joko,

Why not analyze this as simple codeswitching? In the phrase "house opung,"
if "house" were replaced with the Indonesian word for house, would the phrase
be well-formed? The impression from the "buku ayah" example is that it would
be. Please let me know if this is incorrect. But if it's correct, then I don't
see a reason why we can't analyze this as an Indonesian possessive
construction with an English N mixed in -- codeswitching, or as some would
prefer, codemixing. If that's the case, then it's not a developmental stage at
all. It's just a (very young) bilingual person making reference to something
bilingually.

Jeff

Quoting "Joko K. Damanhuri" <joko.k at polmed.ac.id>:
> Dear all,
>
> Happy New Year!!
> I've been observing my child's bilingual acquisition (Indonesian -
> English)
> in Non-native parents bilingual program (bilingualism type by Romaine
> 1995).
>
> I found that my child (3;5 now) still produces Noun + Possessor in
> English
> like "house opung" (opung means granpa), though the frequency is much
> lesser
> than before.
>
> I really like to know whether the acquisition of English as first
> language
> goes through a stage in which a child produces that NP construction,
> such as
> "book daddy" for "daddy's book". Meanwhile, in Indonesian the correct
> form
> for that construction is on the contrary to the English.
>     buku ayah
>     book daddy
>     'daddy's book'
>
> If we assume that the two languages are the competing languages the
> child is
> trying to acquire, can we try to think about this construntion in terms
> of
> typological universal? Let's say that it is easier to acquire
> N+Possessor
> than Possessor+N. There are two reasons for this; first my child does
> this
> correctly in Indonesia since his early acquisition but not in English;
> and
> secondly, Noun as the head of the construction might attract child at
> hand.
>
> Thank you all for your sharing.
>
> Cheers,
> Joko Kusmanto
>
>