Acquisition during normative code-mixing: Trinidadian children’s varilingual pronoun usage

Abstract

While monolingual English speakers acquire most pronouns by age 5, acquisition amid prevalent, normative code-mixing, such as in Trinidad, is underexplored. This study examines how Trinidadian 3- to 5-year-olds express third-person subject, object, reflexive and possessive pronouns and factors influencing pronoun choices. Seventy-five preschoolers produced pronouns via a word elicitation task conducted in Trinidadian English Creole and Trinidad and Tobago English. Responses were coded for children’s age, gender, district and socioeconomic status; task language; grammatical gender/number; and response form. Conditional inference trees facilitated statistical analysis. When choices were available, children exhibited variable production, with Creole forms often dominant. Grammatical gender influenced whether English or Creole pronouns were selected. Task language influenced possessive pronoun choices, indicating developing sociolinguistic competence. The non-significance of other variables suggests widespread mixing of English and Creole pronouns. Findings underscore the importance of describing understudied populations, especially where variation is inherent, to ensure accurate language assessment.