Resisting the grammatical change: Nominal groups in Turkish-Norwegian codeswitching

Abstract

This article deals with a particular grammatical feature in the Turkish-Norwegian codeswitching data, namely the nominal groups, with the help of the Matrix Language Frame model Myers-Scotton, 1993a [1997]). The main point here is to focus on the issue of stability, rather than change, in Turkish when in contact with Norwegian in a bilingual immigrant context. The data present us with rich information about how the Turkish grammatical frame organizes the grammatical setting both for mixed Turkish + Norwegian constituents and for Norwegian compound nouns. In both cases the necessary Turkish genitive and/or possessive markers are employed according to the Turkish grammatical rules, instead of omitting especially the possessive suffix (or, as it is also called here, the compound marker). Normally a change in Turkish spoken in Norway is expected to occur due to intense language contact, however, in this case, morphosyntactic stability is observed.