INVITED RESPONSE TO DAVIES AND BENTAHILA

Abstract

I thank D & B for their stimulating review that concentrates on the MLF model and code-switching (CS), even though Contact linguistics (CL) discusses other contact phenomena, too. This is a model of “classic code-switching,” which is defined several times in CL (8, 105, 297). This scope was always intended, but not explicit in Duelling languages (Myers-Scotton 1993a). The nub of the definition is that only one of the languages contributing surface morphemes to a bilingual CP (i.e. clause) is the source of that clause's morphosyntactic frame. The Morpheme Order and System Morpheme Principles of the MLF model identify this language as the Matrix Language (ML). Classic CS contrasts with composite code-switching. The difference is that in Composite CS, part of the abstract morphosyntactic structure comes from more than one of the participating languages. Composite CS may be more prevalent than classic CS, but has yet to be studied systematically (CL, 298).