Abstract
The present article provides an overview of ongoing field-based research that deploys a variety of interactive experimental procedures in three strategically chosen bilingual contact environments, whose language dyads facilitate a partial separation of morphosyntactic factors in order to test the extent to which proposed grammatical constraints on intra-sentential code-switching are independent of language-specific factors. For purposes of illustration, the possibility of language switches between subject pronouns and verbs is compared for the three bilingual groups. The first scenario includes Ecuadoran Quichua and Media Lengua (entirely Quichua syntax and system morphology, all lexical roots replaced by Spanish items; both are null-subject languages). The second juxtaposes Spanish and the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero; the languages share highly cognate lexicons but differ substantially in grammatical structures (including null subjects in Spanish, only overt subjects in Palenquero). Spanish and Portuguese in north-eastern Argentina along the Brazilian border form the third focus: lexically and grammatically highly cognate languages that are nonetheless kept distinct by speakers (both null-subject languages, albeit with different usage patterns). Results from the three communities reveal a residual resistance against pronoun + verb switches irrespective of the subject-verb configuration, thereby motivating the application of similar techniques to other proposed grammatical constraints.
Highlights
From the beginning of linguistic research on intra-sentential language switching—a paradigm initiated in the 1970’s and continuing at the present—attention has been directed at the possible existence of grammatical configurations that favour or inhibit changing languages within the confines of a single utterance
Quichua and Media Lengua share identical system morphemes and syntactic structures eliminates an important variable that acts as a confound when studying intra-sentential switching between languages that differ in morphosyntax
The experiment was not designed to probe for any special status associated with pronouns or other grammatical categories,11 but Table 3 shows that even with the increased cognitive demands inherent in the close-shadowing task, intra-sentential switches involving a subject pronoun resulted in spontaneous “correction” to monolingual utterances at a higher rate than stimuli with left-to-right switches involving a noun or verb in the other language
Summary
From the beginning of linguistic research on intra-sentential language switching—a paradigm initiated in the 1970’s and continuing at the present—attention has been directed at the possible existence of grammatical configurations that favour or inhibit changing languages within the confines of a single utterance (cf. the studies in Bullock and Toribio 2009 and the references therein). Among the issues that arise in the study of spontaneous intra-sentential code-switching, two have received considerable attention. Structural differences among languages such as head position, verb raising, null subjects and lexical argument structure often make it difficult to tease apart language-specific from more general patterns, the plethora of examples and counter-examples found in code-switching studies. Important is obtaining reliable data on speakers’ acceptance and production of specific switching patterns. Acceptability judgments, while providing valuable data on speakers’ metalinguistic awareness, frequently become entangled with prescriptivist objections to language mixing and do not always accurately reflect actual usage
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