The universality of syntactic constraints on Spanish–English codeswitching in the USA

Abstract

This study focuses on the syntactic properties of codeswitching within sentences uttered by bilingual speakers of Spanish and English in the USA or the so-called Spanglish, by analysing data based on examples cited in the existing literature. To that end, I will examine the definitions of this cultural and linguistic phenomenon, make a necessary distinction among the different language contact phenomena that take place in a bilingual context such as the Spanish and English background in the USA, and evaluate some of the most popular and influential approaches that have come out in the codeswitching literature over the last 30 years. These approaches can be broadly classified into two groups: first, those that are essentially descriptive or constraint-based, and second, the studies that are explanatory or constraint-free. Finally, I conclude that although there seems to be no definitive, universal model of codeswitching, formal linguistics research has comprehensively shown that codeswitching requires a strong command of the two languages and that it is not an unstructured phenomenon. This constitutes a sharp contrast with the relationship commonly established between Spanglish and illiteracy, marginality and chaos. This language choice simply reveals how bilinguals live in between two languages and two cultures.