Code-Mixing in Moeder-Kind Interactie in Dove Families

In this article, we discuss the mixed input offered by four profoundly deaf mothers and the mixed output of their deaf and hearing children. Muysken (2000) distinguishes different forms of code-mixing: insertion, alternation and congruent lexicalisation. We applied these definitions to these language data and found that the mothers used mainly the last type of code-mixing, namely congruent lexicalisation. This results in a mixed form of NGT (Nederlandse Gebarentaal, 'Dutch Sign Language') and Dutch, in which the structure of the utterance is grammatical in both NGT and Dutch. Lexical insertion also occurs, both in the basically NGT utterances and in the Dutch utterances. The deaf children (up to age three) are just beginning to become bilingual and hardly produce any mixed utterances. The hearing children, on the other hand, clearly show that they code-mix, under the influence of the language input.