PERSIAN ENGLISH CODESWITCHING IN A BILINGUAL 3 YEAR OLD CHILD:A TEST OF THE MATRIX LANGUAGE FRAME(MLF) MODEL

The main aim of this paper is to test Matrix Frame (MLF)model of code-switching with Persian English data through a case study d from the daily speech of a 3 year old boy ,and to see whether the data confirm the principles of the model or not .A Persian English corpus was provided from the daily speech of a Persian English bilingual boy during a week. Then the three principles of MLFmodel,that is,the Matrix Language principle,asymmetry principle,and uniform structure principle were verified. The results of the analyses suggest general support for the four principles of the MLF model .It is also concluded that Persian English code-switching does seem to be a ‘classic’ case of code- switching in the case of the child language acquisition that can be tested in other cases to give more proof.

Keywords:

codeswitching , bilingualism , matrix language , embeded language