Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in CodeswitchingThe goal of this book, a companion volume to Social Motivations for Codeswitching (Oxford, 1993) is to describe and explain intrasentential codeswitching--the production of two or more languages within the same sentence. Most linguists who do not study codeswitching think of it as belonging strictly in the domain of sociolinguistics. Most codeswitching studies do indeed have a social aspect, because they typically use naturally occurring performance data as their base. This book, however, is just as much a study in grammatical theory as a study of language in use. The specific research question addressed is this: when speakers alternate between two or more linguistic varieties, how free is this alternation from the structural point of view? Carol Myers-Scotton develops a model of the morphosyntactic constraints on codeswitching and concludes that the principles governing codeswitching are the same everywhere. |
Contents
The Search for StructuralConstraints on Codeswitching | 19 |
The Matrix LanguageFrame | 75 |
Congruence in ML + | 120 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
accessed activated adjectives affixes appear argue argument assigned Bantu bilingual Blocking borrowing called cent Chapter choice claim codeswitching complements considered constraints construction content morphemes conversations core course discussed EL islands English entirely errors especially evidence example fact forms frame French frequency function Further grammatical head hypothesis indicates inflectional integration involved islands language least lemmas lexemes lexical lexicon linguistic marked material means ML+EL constituents MLF model modifiers morpheme order morphological morphosyntactic motivation Nairobi corpus Note noun object occur offers patterns phonological plural position possible prediction prefix present Principle procedures production proposed Recall refer regard relative relevant require researchers result role seems sentence shift Shona similar speakers specific speech structural suggest Swahili Swahili/English switching syntactic system morphemes types unmarked utterances verb verb stem