JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES AND ARTS

Children of mixed parentage in Makurdi face complex challenges in their journey toward language acquisition, largely due to inconsistent linguistic input and varying parental emphasis in their home environments. This study investigates language acquisition and early vocabulary by children of mixed parentage in Makurdi. Using a descriptive survey design, the research employed purposive sampling of 30 parents and 15 teachers to examine language development patterns through a semi-structured interview. The study adopts the Interactionist Theory of Language Acquisition. The findings reveal that children of mixed parentage progress through universal developmental stages of pre-linguistic (0-12 months), holophrastic (12-18 months), two-word (18-24 months), telegraphic (24-30 months), and complex sentence (30+ months) but exhibit distinctive characteristics shaped by their multilingual environments. Children demonstrate enhanced phonetic discrimination and lexical borrowing from both parental languages, producing simplified forms across English and indigenous languages including Tiv, Igbo, Idoma, Yoruba, Hausa, Igede, and Etulo. The study concludes that language acquisition in children of mixed-parentage follows predictable trajectories while being uniquely enriched by bilingual input. Their early vocabulary reflects strategic deployment of all available linguistic resources. The research emphasises that parental input and linguistic environments are crucial factors shaping bilingual acquisition in mixed-language homes, with implications for supportive bilingual education approaches in multilingual Nigerian contexts. The study recommends among other things that parents from mixed linguistic backgrounds should be encouraged to use both languages consistently and naturally at home

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