Alternation Code-mixing of Chhattisgarhi Conversations

Abstract

This paper investigates alternation code-mixing between Chhattisgarhi and English. It is very common to mix English with the mother tongue in several places across the world. Code-mixing is widely found in multilingual countries like India, where many languages, dialects, and varieties are present. Code-mixing is a very useful strategy for bilingual speakers to communicate easily and effectively based on the context. Our focus is in this study of how alternation code mixing takes place between Chhattisgarhi and English by Chhattisgarhi speakers in their daily conversations. This paper examines conversational code-mixing in the repertoire of Chhattisgarhi speakers, and it also finds out the increasing interest of speakers in the English language. Adopting ideas from Muysken (2000), this paper explores different types of alternation code-mixing such as non-nested switching, peripherality, adverbial modification, coordination, left-dislocation, right-dislocation and emblematic or tag-switches between Chhattisgarhi and English. It examines how different patterns or structures are found in the mixing of these two languages. This study further explains the properties of code-mixing, such as embedding in discourse, doubling, flagging, and dummy insertion in relation to code-mixing of Chhattisgarhi conversations.