Abstract

This study investigated the discourse structures in six bilingual German‐English families. The parents followed the concept of one person‐one language. The children were taped in natural interaction with their parents. At the time of the first recording, the children were aged either 2;4 or 2;8, and they were taped a second time six months later. The parents’ discursive strategies were related to the children's acquisition of the minority language. The analysis showed that children were more likely to speak the minority language if the respective parent employed a similarly or more child‐centred mode of interaction than the parent who spoke the majority language.

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