LANGUAGE CHOICE AND FUNCTIONAL-DIFFERENTIATION OF LANGUAGES IN BILINGUAL PARENT-CHILD READING

Language choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch were studied in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antil lian migrant families; the subjects, who were living in the Netherland s, were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one i n Papiamento, and one without text. Code choice was related to the tex t and contents of the book, as well as to restrictions imposed by the language proficiency in both languages of the mothers and children. It was expected that Dutch would be used more for more demanding cogniti ve functions because of its association with school. However, these pa rents did not categorize metalinguistic activity and reasoning as scho ol-related, although they did categorize counting as such and tended t o use Dutch to count.