Code-Switching

This paper challenges the characterization of bilingual behavior derived from the code-switching model, and especially the notion of linguistic independence on which psychological studies of bilingualism have focused almost exclusively. While linguists have concentrated on the situational determinants of code-switching, psychologists have focused on the bilingual's ability to keep his two language systems separate. In the process, the phenomenon of code mixing, that is, switching between languages in an unchanged speech situation and within a single sentence, has been neglected. However, recent linguistic studies have shown that the use of both languages in the same discourse and even within a single sentence is quite common. Such code-mixing has been shown to be an effective, versatile communicative strategy, subject to a number of interlingual syntactic constraints. Discussion focuses on some of these constraints, showing that they have implications for a psychological model of bilingual information processing. Emphasis is placed on: (1) their relevance to issues such as the single versus separate storage hypothesis, (2) the language switch model and models of sentence production, (3) the psychological reality of syntactic constituents, and (4) the relationship between language units and thought units.

Is parental language mixing related to vocabulary acquisition in bilingual infants and children? Bilingual parents (who spoke English and another language; N = 181) completed the Language Mixing Scale, a new self-report measure that assesses how frequently parents use words from two different languages in the same sentence, such as borrowing words from another language or code switching between two languages in the same sentence. Concurrently, English vocabulary size was measured in the bilingual children of these parents. Most parents reported regular language mixing in interactions with their child. Increased rates of parental language mixing were associated with significantly smaller comprehension vocabularies in 1.5-year-old bilingual infants, and marginally smaller production vocabularies in 2-year-old bilingual children. Exposure to language mixing might obscure cues that facilitate young bilingual children’s separation of their languages and could hinder the functioning of learning mechanisms that support the early growth of their vocabularies.

Some languages have a fixed subject position, while others are more flexible. Languages like English require pre-verbal subjects; languages like Spanish allow subjects in postverbal position. Because this difference clusters with several linguistic properties distinguishing the two languages, subjects in Spanish and English have been a perennial issue in linguistic theory, touching central problems like the EPP, the nature of cross-linguistic variation, and the relationship between core functional heads. Our project contributes a novel source of evidence to these debates: Spanish/English codeswitching. Code-switching, the use of two languages in one utterance, combines the languages' lexical items and their attendant syntactic features in a single derivation. Because code-switching, like all natural language, is rule-governed, researchers can exploit judgments about the well-formedness of code-switched sentences to draw conclusions about the combinations of features they represent. We report on a formal judgment experiment testing subject position in Spanish/English code-switching as a function of the presence of two functional heads known (from monolingual evidence) to affect subject placement: the C(omplementizer) and T(ense) heads. By manipulating which head appears in which language, we test the availability of post-verbal subjects under different feature combinations. Our results show that post-verbal subjects are only available when both C and T are in Spanish; neither Spanish head alone is sufficient. This finding suggests that the features regulating subject position stem from neither head alone, which is problematic for traditional approaches to the EPP as a feature of T but in line with other recent research on null subjects.

Analyses of corpus-based indices of conversational code-switching in bilingual speakers predict the occurrence of intra-sentential code-switches consistent with the joint activation of both languages. Yet most utterances contain no code-switches despite good evidence for the joint activation of both languages even in single language utterances. Varying language activation levels is an insufficient mechanism to explain the variety of language use. We need a model of code-switching, consistent with the joint activation of both languages, which permits the range of language use in bilingual speakers. I treat overt speech as the outcome of a number of competitive processes governed by a set of control processes external to the language networks. In a conversation, the speech of the other person may "trigger" code-switches consistent with bottom-up control. By contrast, the intentions of the speaker may act top-down to set the constraints on language use. Given this dual control perspective, the paper extends the control process model (Green and Wei 2014) to cover a plausible neurocomputational basis for the construction and execution of utterance plans in code-switching. Distinct control states mediate different types of language use with switching frequency as a key parameter in determining the control state for code-switches. The paper considers the nature of these states and their transitions.

This article addresses some puzzles regarding the properties of light verb constructions that have been amply documented in many code-switching pairs, with particular focus on some well-known asymmetries. This article should be viewed as an argument that generative analyses of code-switching are conceptually and empirically superior to the mainstream approach, referred to as the Matrix Language Frame Model.

This paper deals with the phenomenon of the ‘microphone gaffe’ in the context of sports broadcast talk. This peculiar communicative event is characterized by the public mediation of live talk to media audiences without the speakers being aware that they are actually on air. Adopting a general pragmatic perspective, this paper analyses the microphone gaffe in terms of its specific participation framework and discusses its humorous potential. It is argued that the key element underlying these communicative situations consists of the momentary non-acknowledgement of the media audiences by the speakers. The audience, repositioned as non-participants, actually find themselves in the role of the ‘eavesdropper’ on a private conversation. On the production side of the communicative scheme, the mistaken belief in enjoying this momentary ‘private’ speech event is accompanied by a shift of footing, where the commentators’ institutional identities become replaced with their non-public personas, evidenced by forms of backstage talk that contrasts with their frontstage performance. This paper proposes that in case of microphone gaffes, humorous effect arises from the various incongruities between the actual and the presumed footings, as well as from the subsequent recontextualizations that enclose the original communicative act within an additional communicative level. The aim of the paper is to propose and elaborate a general theoretical framework for the analysis of unintended humour in media discourse.

This study reports two metalinguistic parameters that constitute the schematic control of lateral inhibitory links between translation equivalents within the bilingual lexico-semantic system of Green’s (1998a, 1998b, 2007) inhibitory control (IC) model. Building on Green’s postulation that the bilingual lexico-semantic system is controlled by a hierarchy of schemas under a supervisory attentional system, the bilingual unconsciously filters activated lemmas during fluent spontaneous codeswitching, such that lemmas that are semantico-syntactically versatile or morphosyntactically transparent are likely to reach a threshold of activation first while other lemmas are inhibited. To investigate the issue, we collected code-paired naturalistic and elicited data with a focus on code-switched determiner phrases from 140 Mandarin-English simultaneous bilinguals who were post-secondary students in Singapore. We found that the semanticosyntactic and morpho-syntactic dissimilarities between Mandarin and English activated both filters. As most Mandarin determiners are economical vis-à-vis their English counterparts, their lemmas were selected frequently while English lemmas were largely inhibited. It was also found that our participants preferred English nouns in filling the lexical category for their interpretable feature of number, a feature that is normally absent in Mandarin nouns.

This article analyses interactions taking place in two transient communities involving local and international actors at a Catalan university. In scenarios in which established norms for language use are less available, people from different language backgrounds face the practical issue of establishing a common means for accomplishing understanding. This study examines how participants in the encounters establish a plurilingual medium of interaction, despite other solutions being available to them. It further proposes the notion of ‘doing understanding’ to refer to the situated, jointly constructed and embodied performance of sharing repertoires. The results demonstrate how participants locally construct and challenge norms and possibilities of language use in transient communities in international higher education, supporting more critical consideration of how languages should be categorized by universities in their internationalization pursuits in seeking harmony with linguistic diversity.

In the concluding contribution to this special issue, we return to the key issue that motivated our 1986 article on world Englishes (WE) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). This coda begins by considering the impact of WE on SLA at a number of levels, with reference to the pluricentricity of English, conceptions of the 'native speaker' , formalist ontology, functional perspectives, multilingualism , and other dynamic approaches to SLA. We then proceed to consider recent critiques of the WE paradigm, before moving to a discussion of the current synergy between world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition studies, noting that in many contemporary approaches to SLA, 'the monolingual bias has given way to a multilingual turn.' Nevertheless, even if there is a far greater appreciation of world Englishes than three decades ago, it is still evidently the case that textbooks in Second Language Acquisition continue to be focused on cognitive and structural dimensions of language acquisition , and often fail to incorporate social, functional and multilingual perspectives.

This study addresses the question of how focused code-switching practices can become. It takes two complementary approaches to determine sorts and degrees of focusing, namely, a sequential analyst perspective, and a holistic perspective involving general sociolinguistic data and member's perspectives. The case study presented involves a multilectal interaction between urban speakers of Oshiwambo, the main ethnic language of Namibia, where it co-exists with English and Afrikaans, the country's lingua francas. The analysis reveals a range of structurally or qualitatively distinctive CS patterns involving Oshiwambo (dialects), English, and Afrikaans, used by all participants. Mostly alternational CS and specific types of backflagging display sequential regularity, while other CS patterns seem randomly distributed, at first sight an attribute of 'free variation'. However, the examination of social indexicalities attached to the observed CS patterns shows that they all contribute to the performance of a multi-layered balancing act between urban and ethnic authenticities.

The main aim of this study is to introduce a model of TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) annotation of Hebrew elements in Judeo-Arabic texts, i.e., code switching (CS), borrowing, and Hebrew quotations. This article will provide an introduction to using XML (Extensible Markup Language) to investigate sociolinguistic aspects in medieval Judeo-Arabic texts. Accordingly, it will suggest to what extent using XML is useful for investigating linguistic and sociolinguistic features in the Judeo-Arabic paradigm. To provide an example for how XML annotation could be applied to Judeo-Arabic texts, a corpus of 300 pages selected from three Judeo-Arabic books has been manually annotated using the TEI P5. The annotation covers all instances of CS, borrowing, and Hebrew quotations in that corpus.

In this study, I report three experiments that examined whether words from one language of bilinguals can use the syntactic features form the other language, and how such syntactic co-activation might influence syntactic processing. In other words, I examined whether there are any cases in which an inherent syntactic feature a lexical item is inhibited and the syntactic feature that belongs to the other language is used, instead. In the non-switch condition in Experiments 1 and 2, Persian-English bilinguals described pictures using an adjective-noun string from the same language requested. In the switch condition, they used a noun and an adjective from the other language. In the switch condition in Experiment 3, participants used only the adjective of a noun phrase from the other language. The results showed that bilinguals may inhibit the activation of a word’s syntactic feature and use the syntactic property from the other language, instead (e.g., pirāhane (shirt-N) black). As the combinatorial node (the node that specifies different kinds of syntactic structures in which a word can be used) of a used adjective retains activation at least temporarily, bilinguals are more likely to use the same combinatorial node even with an adjective from the other language. Cross-language syntactic interference increased in the switch conditions. Moreover, more inappropriate responses were observed when switching from bilinguals’ L2 to L1. The results also revealed that different experimental contexts may lead to different patterns of the control mechanism. The results will be interpreted in terms of Hartsuiker and Pickering’s (2008) model of syntactic representation.

Abstract This study examined single-word code-mixing produced by bilingual preschoolers in order to better understand lexical choice patterns in each language. Analysis included item-level code-mixed responses of 606 five-year-old children. Per parent report, children were separated by language dominance based on language exposure and use. Children were assigned to a no-risk or at-risk for language impairment group based on individual performance from an English–Spanish screening battery.

This article deals with the question of the diglossic code-switching in the Arabic spoken language and especially in learned discourses. I aim to explain the rhetorical inherent value in the diglossic code-switching in the Arabic spoken language and I will attempt to show through a series of examples drawn from an Aljazeera episode, how the juxtaposition of standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic can be a vehicle for messages that bear rhetorical / metaphorical values.

This paper discusses the textual position, form, and functions
of English–Greek code-switching, which occurs in the
form of insertions, in Greek Cypriot print media. The data
consist of seven magazines and seven newspapers. For the
analysis of the data, a theoretical framework for written
multilingualism is adopted and adapted, namely “English
on top”. The presence of English in the mainstream
Cypriot print media is scarce. Code-switching into English
mainly takes the form of naming, heading, quotations, set
phrases, and doublets; a doublet refers to the use of a word
next to its translation in another language. It exhibits a
variety of functions such as language play, emphasis, and
clarification. This is not always the case, however. In some
cases, no specific textual function can be attributed to the
English insertions. In such cases, it is the symbolic and/or
indexical function of English that is exploited.

This article focuses on the question to what degree typological characteristics
of the languages involved interact with the Matrix Language vs.
Embedded Language and Content Morpheme vs. System Morpheme distinctions.
In addition, the integration of Estonian items in Russian–Estonian
codeswitched sentences is described, because the extent of integration
of Estonian items into the Russian matrix is closely related to matrix
language determination. Both Estonian and Russian have a complex
inflectional morphology. Full integration of an Estonian item into Russian
means gender and case assignment, but in fact this does not occur in all
codeswitched instances. Russian–Estonian data demonstrate a wider range
of possibilities than just fully integrated and completely unintegrated
items. Estonian items may be integrated phonologically into Russian
(e.g. regarding vowel length or stress), but morphological and phonological
integration do not depend on each other: Estonian items may show extensive phonological but
no morphological integration into Russian and vice versa. Bilingual data show that the matrix
language cannot be determined by analyzing the morphosyntactic level only; the degree of
phonological integration of codeswitched words should also be taken into account. Thus, the
morphosyntactic bias in the Matrix Language Frame model, meaning that phonological adaptation
has no influence at all on matrix language assignment, is criticized.

This paper proposes an analysis of the Taiwanese DP justified by Taiwanese–Spanish code-switching data from highly competent bilingual speakers from a Taiwanese–Spanish community in Buenos Aires. In line with other research, we claim that Taiwanese has a NumP and an independent DP which cannot be filled by null elements. Further, we propose a new analysis for pre-classifier (Cl) adjectives (the tua ‘big’ and se ‘small’ type), which we show to be functional elements of what we call the Size Phrase. We also claim that Taiwanese has two classifier positions, the upper of which optionally appears for our speakers in constructions involving a Size element. In addition to our claims on the Taiwanese DP, our analysis provides evidence against claims that phrase structure is universal (Cinque, Adverbs and functional heads: a cross-linguistics perspective, 1999).

The present study examines two aspects of determiner phrases (DPs) that have been previously investigated in Spanish/English code-switching; namely, the openness of semantic domains to non-native nouns and gender assignment in monolingual versus code-switched speech. The quantitative analysis of naturalistic, oral production data from 62 native speakers of Northern Belizean Spanish revealed both similarities and notable differences vis-à-vis previous findings for varieties of Spanish/English code-switching in the U.S. Hispanophone context. Semantic domains that favoured non-native nouns in Spanish/English DPs included academia, technology, work/money-related terms, abstract concepts, linguistics/language terms and everyday items. In relation to gender assignation, assignment patterns in monolingual DPs were canonical whereas an overwhelming preference for the masculine default gender was attested in mixed DPs. Biological gender was not found to be deterministic in switched DPs. The analysis highlights the important role that type of code-switching has on contact outcomes in bi/multilingual communities, as speech patterns are reflective of the status and resourcefulness that code-switching is afforded at a societal and idiolectal level.

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/19552629-00903001

This paper aims to investigate whether language use can account for the differences in code-switching within the article-noun phrase in children exposed to English and German, French and Russian, and English and Polish. It investigates two aspects of language use: equivalence and segmentation. Four children’s speech is derived from corpora of naturalistic interactions recorded between the ages of two and three and used as a source of the children’s article-noun phrases. We demonstrate that children’s CS cannot be fully explained by structural equivalence in each two languages: there is CS in French-Russian although French does, and Russian does not, use articles. We also demonstrate that language pairs which use higher numbers of articles types, and therefore have more segmented article-noun phrases, are also more open to switching. Lastly, we show that longitudinal use of monolingual articles-noun phrases corresponds with the trends in the use of bilingual article-noun phrases. The German-English child only starts to mix English articles once they become more established in monolingual combinations while the French-Russian child ceases to mix French proto-articles with Russian nouns once target articles enter frequent use. These findings are discussed in the context of other studies which report code-switching across different language pairs.

Tasks with a high involvement load would induce a higher success rate of retention and recall of target words for learners. A high task-based involvement load is defined by the need to focus on target words, the mental search for target word meanings by guessing from context, and to select and decide on the word meanings that are most appropriate in context. This study investigates the efficacy of codeswitched reading, a high involvement load task, in raising the lexical retention-retrieval performance of EFL learners, who were late Chinese-English bilinguals. An experimental group (n = 78) was learning vocabulary from reading codeswitched texts. A comparison group (n = 76) was reading graded readers without lexical glossing. An immediate retrieval test was conducted without prior notice followed by a delayed retrieval test a week later. Independent-samples t-test results show that the EFL learners in the experimental group significantly outperformed the comparison
group in lexical retention-retrieval. The experimental group's recall scores were higher
than those of the comparison group. The higher involvement load of codeswitched reading tasks and the visual salience of codeswitched target words accounted for the higher retention-retrieval scores of the experimental group than those of the comparison group.

Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew context) and interviewed the teachers about their use of languages in the classroom. We found that in each context the teachers reported modifications to an initial bilingual education model over time: from a strict separation of languages, to flexible bilingual practices. A thematic analysis of the contents of the teacher reflections as they emerged through interviews revealed five shared categories: (a) the flexible use of two languages; (b) responsible code-switching; (c) contextual and linguistic supports; (d) adjustments for individual children; and (e) role-modelling. Despite the different settings and socio-linguistic conditions, the similarities in teachers’ practices and the rationale they gave for applying flexible bilingual practices were significant. The shared practices across contexts may have important implications for bilingual education.

Playing with languages: code-switching between Italian-Brazilian immigrants during a ruzzola tournament Brincar com as línguas: a troca de código entre imigrados Ítalo-Brasileiros durante um torneio de ruzzola ABSTRACT This article examines the language strategies, in particular code-switching, implemented by a group of Italian immigrants who live in the city of São Paulo and are enrolled in a ruzzola tournament. In this bilingual context we saw that, in accordance with the language skills of the players and interaction management requirements, the language of interaction is constantly negotiated. The data analyzed tend to indicate that even very minimal and rudimentary use of the language can help contribute to the individual's Italian identity, and that certain activities that are perceived as traditional in the culture of origin can function as a vehicle for renewed interest in the language of the country of origin. This study adopts as our theoretical and methodological reference the bilingual conversation procedural model developed by Auer (1984), Alfonzetti (1992), De Fina (2007a, 2007b), and the contextualization theory of Gumperz (1982).

This paper shall describe the bridging strategies used by Grades 3 and 4 English teachers from schools in two regions in the Philippines to help their multilingual students transition from using the mother tongue as medium of instruction in the different subject areas to using English in the English classroom. Data were obtained through interviews, classroom observations and stimulated recall. Findings revealed that the teachers utilized different translanguaging strategies like direct translation, code-switching, metalinguistic comparison-contrast and metalinguistic explanation. These strategies used the various linguistic and semiotic resources of both students and teachers as mediating tools to allow more efficient teaching and learning and more active participation from students in the language learning activities.

The present study focuses on the experiences of 182 multilingual clients who had been exposed to various therapeutic approaches in various countries. An on-line questionnaire was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis of feedback from clients with multilingual therapists showed that clients use or initiate significantly more code-switching (CS) than their therapists, and that it typically occurs when the emotional tone is raised. Gender was unrelated to CS frequency. CS is used strategically when discussing episodes of trauma and shame, creating proximity or distance. CS allows clients to express themselves more fully to the therapist, adding depth and nuance to the therapy. The therapist’s multilingualism promotes empathy and clients’ own multilingualism constitutes an important aspect of their sense of self. Multilingual clients benefit from a therapeutic environment where multilingualism is appreciated, and where they can use CS."

This article examines young men’s concepts of status in urban Tamil Nadu, India, focussing in particular on their concept of ‘style’. The article shows how young men experience their position in the life cycle as between childhood and adulthood, and how this liminality mediates their concepts of status. In particular, I focus on the construction of the youth peer group as in distinction to, and transgressive of, the forms of adult respectability, propriety and authority from which young men are excluded by virtue of their age. I show how the peer group is marked by a productive tension between transgression and self-differentiation, and reciprocity, intimacy and peer pressure. The article then turns to two kinds of source material for young men’s performances of status: English-Tamil slang and counterfeit global brands. I show how the tension between, and negotiation of, the mandates to status-raise and status- level in the peer group transform and revalourise these signs of status. The article concludes by arguing that while from afar, such youth practice seems to be negotiating globalisation, modernity and tradition, a close analysis of peer-group dynamics shows that youth practice is more centrally concerned with peer-group status negotiations.

My study is based on an ethnography of two groups of young people from working-class neighbourhoods in Barcelona. I was interested in researching the impact of Catalan language policies on the identities of young people of Spanish-speaking immigrant families. I sought to go beyond the constraints of traditional structuralist approaches in Sociolinguistics in order to make my analysis relevant to people working for gender equality, the promotion of the Catalan language, or other social causes. I combine ideas from Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Fairclough, Foucault and Goffman to build a dialectical, historical, process-centred perspective that conceptualises practices in terms of social and political struggles.

I analyse young people's peer-group activities in terms of their significance for the construction of gender identities. I propose a variety of forms of masculinity and femininity according to the various ways in which members organised their gender displays in face-to-face interaction.

I also show how their use of argot and dialectal Spanish was part of the processes whereby members defined their relationships, constructed particular subject positions in interaction and struggled to legitimate their own values.

I explore the meanings constructed through Catalan and Spanish by looking into the code-switching practices of my participants. I analysed their talk in terms of narratives that present particular sequential dramatisations of events for conversational audiences. These narratives follow the expressive intention of the author, and are populated with multiple voices of animated characters. I argue that, in the groups I studied, Catalan was generally not used to animate the voices that were central to the identities of the peer-group, and particularly to masculine identities.

In order to contextualise these practices within the wider society, I also look into the processes of language choice in face-to-face encounters. I argue that existing conventions made it difficult for people to find opportunities to speak Catalan. I also pointed to the difficulties that my participants had to find employment, which were particularly acute amongst the more politically aware individuals. I conclude that these young working-class people had little possibilities of investing in more egalitarian forms of identity given their lack of resources and opportunities to develop their identities in other social spaces, such as the workplace.

This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-switching by native Uyghur speakers. In a number of language contact situations with similar verb mixing, foreign verbal items have been argued to be treated as nominal in the host language. However, I argue based on examples from personal communications with Uyghur speakers and my own elicitations that Mandarin verbs are still treated as a verbal category by Uyghur speakers for four reasons: (1) Mandarin verbs project their argument structure in Uyghur; (2) the Mandarin perfective aspectual particle le is uniquely included with a subset of Mandarin verbs; (3) the Uyghur verbalizing marker-la cannot attach to Mandarin verbs; and (4) the Uyghur accusative case marker-ni cannot attach to Mandarin verbs. The paper also discusses why it is not possible for Mandarin verbs to inflect with Uyghur morphology, and proposes a specific constraint on inflecting foreign verbs embedded in rich inflectional languages. The paper also poses the question of whether the availability of multiple light verbs to combine with foreign verbs correlates with the verbal status of foreign verbs in the host language.

This empirical study, based on the qualitative and quantitative data from 1005 bi- and multilinguals, suggests Age of onset  is unrelated to feelings of difference.  While several participants mentioned the fact that limited proficiency in the LX made them feel different, no statistically significant relationship emerged between the amount of difference experienced when shifting languages and self-reported proficiency in speaking the LX, nor in frequency of use of the LX.  The only independent variables to be linked to feeling different were education level, age and anxiety in speaking with colleagues and speaking on the phone in the second language and third language, with higher levels of the latter being linked to a stronger feeling of difference.  Some participants presented unique explanations, linking feelings of difference to conscious or unconscious shifts in behaviour and to unique contexts of language use.  Several participants also reported these feelings of difference to change over time.

It is argued in this paper that CS should be considered first and foremost from a sociolinguistic perspective, that is to say from a perspective where lan- guage behavior and use are related to speakers’ (social) identity and characteristics, or to aspects of their social life in the broad sense.