Code-switching alone cannot explain intraspeaker syntactic variability: Evidence from a spoken elicitation experiment

Björn Lundquist,Maud Westendorp,Bror-Magnus S Strand

doi:10.1017/s0332586520000190

Björn Lundquist, Maud Westendorp + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/s0332586520000190

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Abstract

AbstractWe address the question whether speakers activate different grammars when they encounter linguistic input from different registers, here written standardised language and spoken dialect. This question feeds into the larger theoretical and empirical question if variable syntactic patterns should be modelled as switching between different registers/grammars, or as underspecified mappings from form to meaning within one grammar. We analyse 6000 observations from 26 high school students from Tromsø, comprising more than 20 phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic variables obtained from two elicited production experiments: one using standardised written language and one using spoken dialect as the elicitation source. The results suggest that most participants directly activate morphophonological forms from the local dialect when encountering standardised orthographic forms, suggesting that they do not treat the written and spoken language as different grammars. Furthermore, the syntactic variation does not track the morphophonological variation, which suggests that code/register-switching alone cannot explain syntactic optionality.

Highlights

Many, if not all, language users are bi- or multilectal: that is, their linguistic competence encompasses two or more closely related systems, which we may label dialects, sociolects, registers or ‘lects’
We address the role of register/dialect mixing in accounting for SYNTACTIC variation within speakers: can apparent syntactic optionality be modelled as a higher level switching between fully deterministic grammars, or is optionality better modelled as underspecification within one grammar? This question, as we will see, is only meaningful as long as we either associate a grammar with a set of shared linguistic attributes or connect it to a specific sociolinguistic context
We have good support for a theory of syntactic variation as code-switching, but if syntactic variation turns out to be completely independent of variation in lexical, morphological and phonological forms the syntactic variation is better modelled as within-grammar optionality

Summary

Introduction

If not all, language users are bi- or multilectal: that is, their linguistic competence encompasses two or more closely related systems, which we may label dialects, sociolects, registers or ‘lects’. 250 Björn Lundquist, Maud Westendorp & Bror-Magnus S Strand during reading, both at the segmental and suprasegmental level). Once a grammar has been identified, either through linguistic properties or context, we can investigate if certain syntactic patterns co-vary with a set of lexical, morphological and phonological forms. If they do, we have good support for a theory of syntactic variation as code-switching, but if syntactic variation turns out to be completely independent of variation in lexical, morphological and phonological forms the syntactic variation is better modelled as within-grammar optionality

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