ABSTRACT: The ‘seed concepts’ hypothesis states that there exists in the human mind a set of most... more ABSTRACT: The ‘seed concepts’ hypothesis states that there exists in the human mind a set of most fundamental concepts that crystallize during the earliest period of ‘concept formation’ in the mind of the infant, a period which is broadly concomitant with the incipient ‘single-word’ stage (around 18–24 months) in the child's language acquisition process. These concepts seem to stem from the child's need to distinguish his ‘self from the ‘nonself through the instrumentality, primarily, of sensorimotor activity. This notion of ‘seed concepts’, in turn, gives rise to the ‘seed concepts constraint’, on all-encompassing, universal principle. This principle holds that in the intra-sententially code-switched speech of the bilingual the ‘seed concepts’ get heavily marked for realization in the phonetics of the first language (the ‘seed language’) in contradistinction to the second language (the ‘feed language’). It is claimed that, although subject to parameterization to a limited extent, the ‘seed concepts constraint’ suffices to replace the various particularistic grammatical claims concerning intrasentential code switching hitherto proposed in the literature.
In codeswitching contexts, the language of a syntactic head determines the distribution of its co... more In codeswitching contexts, the language of a syntactic head determines the distribution of its complements. Mahootian 1993 derives this generalization by representing heads as the anchors of elementary trees in a lexicalized TAG. However, not all codeswitching sequences are amenable to a head-complement analysis. For instance, adnominal adjectives can occupy positions not available to them in their own language, and the TAG derivation of such sequences must use unanchored auxiliary trees. palabras heavy-duty `heavy-duty words' (Spanish-English; Poplack 1980:584) taste lousy sana `very lousy taste' (English-Swahili; Myers-Scotton 1993:29, (10)) Given the null hypothesis that codeswitching and monolingual sequences are derived in an identical manner, sequences like those above provide evidence that pure lexicalized TAGs are inadequate for the description of natural language.
... He simply restated what he saw, but made the following comment: “Bobby was talking nasty on t... more ... He simply restated what he saw, but made the following comment: “Bobby was talking nasty on the bus and he stopped because he was in school.” The teacher asked why it was important to “stop talking nasty.” “So you don't get into trouble,” stated the third boy. ...
... where the aim is to make use of the minimal theoretical apparatus and concludes that fruitf... more ... where the aim is to make use of the minimal theoretical apparatus and concludes that fruitful research into structural aspects of intrasentential code switching can be carried out within the framework of minimalist syntax (see also MacSwan, 2004, 2005; Gonzalez, 2007). ...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2008
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a rapidly expanding field of research, conducted in a wi... more Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a rapidly expanding field of research, conducted in a wide variety of disciplines, including linguistics. To date, however, the majority of research undertaken on CMC has focused on English and very little attention has been paid to CMC in languages other than English. The internet is no longer the monolingual, English-dominated space it was at its inception. It is now far more representative of the multilingual global world whose communication it facilitates, and this should be reflected by the research undertaken in this domain. There is, therefore, a growing need for sociolinguistic research on how people actually communicate on this 'multilingual internet' . Against this background, this paper examines, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the characteristics of Afrikaans-English code switching on internet relay chat (IRC). IRC is a very popular system of CMC. Communication on IRC, although written, is largely synchronous, and as such has been compared with face-to-face communication. The data examined in this paper consist of logs of IRC interactions in public IRC channels on irc.sun.ac.za (the Stellenbosch University IRC server) and logs of interaction on local hubs in DC++ (a file-sharing application that allows for synchronous chatting).
... Our analysis showed that speakers do not always speak in full sentences during spontaneousspe... more ... Our analysis showed that speakers do not always speak in full sentences during spontaneousspeech. ... word in each turn, but it is not as easy to do so for Chinese text. ... 2006 [11] YC Chan, PC Ching, Tan Lee and Houwei Cao "Automatic speech recognition of Cantonese-English ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2011
ABSTRACT It is generally assumed that in code-switching (CS) switches between two languages are c... more ABSTRACT It is generally assumed that in code-switching (CS) switches between two languages are categorical, however, recent research suggests that the phonologies involved in CS are merged and bilinguals must actively suppress one language when encoding in the other. Thus, it was hypothesized that CS does not take place abruptly but that cues before the point of language change are also present. This hypothesis is tested with a corpus of Spanish-English CS examining word-initial voiceless stop VOT and the vowel in the discourse marker "like." English VOTs at CS boundaries were shorter, or more "Spanish-like," than in monolingual utterances. Preliminary results suggest Spanish VOTs at CS boundaries were shorter than in monolingual utterances, thus even more Spanish-like than monolingual Spanish utterances. The vowel of "like" in English utterances was more monophthongal and had a lower final F2 as compared to "like" in Spanish utterances. At CS boundaries, "like" began similarly to the language preceding the token and ended similarly to the language following it. For example, in a "English-like-Spanishnn" utterance, initial F2 measurements were more English-like but final measurements more Spanish-like. These results suggest code-switching boundaries are not categorical, but an area where phonologies of both languages affect productions.
ABSTRACT: This paper explores an Optimality-Theoretic approach (Prince and Smolensky, 1994) to ac... more ABSTRACT: This paper explores an Optimality-Theoretic approach (Prince and Smolensky, 1994) to account for the observed cross-linguistic patterns of code-switching. The proposal is premised on the simple assumption that code-switching strives for well-formedness. I assume that when the embedding constituents are mixed into the matrix language, the syntax operates to optimize well-formedness. I show that optimization of well-formedness in code-switching follows from the (violable) ranked constraints. I will argue that the patterns of code-switching emerge from the interactions among the ranked constraints.
... or accent evaluation con-cepts and to relabel them as speech performance or dialect in d... more ... or accent evaluation con-cepts and to relabel them as speech performance or dialect in discourse, entailing a significant realignment of sociolinguistic studies of dialect, in such a way that dialect sociolinguistics will need to address the encoding and recep-tion of dialect ...
ABSTRACT: Code-switching research has focused on spontaneous conversation, and code-switching ha... more ABSTRACT: Code-switching research has focused on spontaneous conversation, and code-switching has often been seen as a consequence of bilinguals attending to and extending the “macro” status and functions of the two languages in society, attitudes towards these languages, and their cultural connotations, for instance, the “we-code” vs. “they-code” distinction. In the Hong Kong context, code-switching to English has been primarily considered as quoting “Western” concepts and ideas, conveying referential and connotative meanings absent in Cantonese. Investigating a corpus of planned discourse, namely, Cantonese popular songs (i.e. Cantopop) in Hong Kong, this paper finds that the status and functions of English in Cantopop are more variable and flexible, beyond a mere symbol of “Western” culture or identity. Nonetheless, these functions can be attributed to the properties of the pop song genre, namely, Cantopop as poetic text, media text, and a product of pop culture; in particular, code-switching fits into the rhyming scheme, marks text structure, indexes prior texts, and conveys alternative identities.
Kodewisseling is vinnig besig om 'n kritiese faktor te word in Afrikataal-ontwikkeling en verande... more Kodewisseling is vinnig besig om 'n kritiese faktor te word in Afrikataal-ontwikkeling en verandering in Suid-Afrika se meertalige en multikulturele gemeenskap. Hierdie artikel doen verslag oor Zulu T1-sprekers se motivering vir en houding teenoor kodewisseling. Die data wat hier bespreek word, is afkomstig uit drie bronne: vraelyste, onderhoude en persoonlike waarnemings. Die bespreking van die data is gegrond op huidige teoretiese navorsingsraamwerke op the gebied van kodewisseling. Hierby word ingesluit die ‘markedness’ model, spraakakkomodasie-teorie, die interaksionele model en die gespreksmodel vir kodewisseling. Voorlopige bevindings word bespreek en hulle implikasies vir navorsing op die gebied van kodewisseling in Suid-Afrika word aangedui.Code-switching is fast becoming a critical factor in African language development and change in South Africa's multilingual and multicultural society. This article reports on Zulu L1 speakers' motivations for and attitudes towards code-switching. The data discussed in this article comes from three sources: questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. The discussion of the data is informed by current theoretical frameworks in code-switching research, including the markedness model, speech accommodation theory, the interactional model, and the conversational code-switching model. Preliminary findings are presented and their implications for code-switching research in South Africa are considered.
The revised hierarchical model (RHM) of bilingual language processing posits independent word for... more The revised hierarchical model (RHM) of bilingual language processing posits independent word form representations for the dominant language (L1) and the nondominant language (L2), facilitated translation from L2 words to L1 words, access to common concepts for L1 and L2, and stronger activation of concepts for L1 than for L2. Spanish-English and English-Spanish bilinguals brainstormed for two sessions; half switched languages (L1-L2 or L2-L1) and half stayed in the same language (L1-L1 or L2-L2) across sessions. In both sessions, L1 brainstorming resulted in more efficient idea productivity than L2 brainstorming, supporting stronger concept activation for L1, consistent with the RHM. Switching languages from L2 to L1 resulted in the most efficient idea productivity in Session 2, suggesting that switching to L1 not only permits strong concept activation, but also the activation of concepts that are relatively different than those activated by L2, inconsistent with the RHM. Switching languages increased the proportion of Session 1 ideas repeated during Session 2, despite instructions not to repeat. This finding suggests that there is activation of concepts as well as word forms in same language brainstorming and that this dual activation aids in following instructions not to repeat, consistent with the RHM. It is suggested that the RHM be re-specified to accommodate the notion that L1 and L2 access relatively different concepts.
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interpretative evaluation of current approaches to the systemati... more ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interpretative evaluation of current approaches to the systematic study of code-switching and other related phenomena of language contact such as code-mixing and borrowing.1 Code-switching is regarded as a skilled discourse strategy that bilingual or multilingual speakers can exploit both socially and semantically in bilingual or multilingual settings. The paper introduces a type of conceptual code-switching that reflects that code-contact should be studied from a sociolin-guistic (code-alternations) and psycholinguistic (code-alterations) perspective. The focus will be less on a structural description of code-contact but on the potential of code-switching as a complex language contact phenomenon with regard to English as a world language.
... Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002, p. 70) compare congruence checking to feature checking w... more ... Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002, p. 70) compare congruence checking to feature checking within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995): “Congruence checking at the lemma level verifies that the abstract structures projected by a content morpheme are congruent ...
This paper examines the presence of English-origin discourse markers in otherwise Croatian speech... more This paper examines the presence of English-origin discourse markers in otherwise Croatian speech. Previous examinations of bilingual discourse marking have focused on habitualisation, pragmatic transference, cognitive processes (in terms of reducing the ‘mental load’ of distinguishing between two systems) or psycholinguistic factors (e.g. ‘non-deactivation’ of pragmatic forms from one language which speakers habitually speak). However, such studies only address transference of pragmatic norms, whether features and/or forms. They have limited explanatory power where speakers employ discourse forms from one language and equivalent forms from the other language. This study examines the frequency and functionality of English-origin forms compared to Croatian ones in a sample based on speech recordings of 100 Croatian–English bilinguals. Findings here show that English forms generally co-occur with Croatian forms in a statistical sense and only displace Croatian ones where English forms are polyfunctional or perform more functions that their Croatian counterparts. This accounts for the higher statistical frequency of forms such as yeah and so, while forms such as no and you know co-occur to the same degree as their Croatian equivalents. Where a Croatian item such as kao (‘like’) can fulfil more functions than its English equivalent it is shown to have a higher incidence than like. Thus, linguistic, in particular micro-discourse, features are shown to influence selection of discourse markers.
ABSTRACT: The ‘seed concepts’ hypothesis states that there exists in the human mind a set of most... more ABSTRACT: The ‘seed concepts’ hypothesis states that there exists in the human mind a set of most fundamental concepts that crystallize during the earliest period of ‘concept formation’ in the mind of the infant, a period which is broadly concomitant with the incipient ‘single-word’ stage (around 18–24 months) in the child's language acquisition process. These concepts seem to stem from the child's need to distinguish his ‘self from the ‘nonself through the instrumentality, primarily, of sensorimotor activity. This notion of ‘seed concepts’, in turn, gives rise to the ‘seed concepts constraint’, on all-encompassing, universal principle. This principle holds that in the intra-sententially code-switched speech of the bilingual the ‘seed concepts’ get heavily marked for realization in the phonetics of the first language (the ‘seed language’) in contradistinction to the second language (the ‘feed language’). It is claimed that, although subject to parameterization to a limited extent, the ‘seed concepts constraint’ suffices to replace the various particularistic grammatical claims concerning intrasentential code switching hitherto proposed in the literature.
In codeswitching contexts, the language of a syntactic head determines the distribution of its co... more In codeswitching contexts, the language of a syntactic head determines the distribution of its complements. Mahootian 1993 derives this generalization by representing heads as the anchors of elementary trees in a lexicalized TAG. However, not all codeswitching sequences are amenable to a head-complement analysis. For instance, adnominal adjectives can occupy positions not available to them in their own language, and the TAG derivation of such sequences must use unanchored auxiliary trees. palabras heavy-duty `heavy-duty words' (Spanish-English; Poplack 1980:584) taste lousy sana `very lousy taste' (English-Swahili; Myers-Scotton 1993:29, (10)) Given the null hypothesis that codeswitching and monolingual sequences are derived in an identical manner, sequences like those above provide evidence that pure lexicalized TAGs are inadequate for the description of natural language.
... He simply restated what he saw, but made the following comment: “Bobby was talking nasty on t... more ... He simply restated what he saw, but made the following comment: “Bobby was talking nasty on the bus and he stopped because he was in school.” The teacher asked why it was important to “stop talking nasty.” “So you don't get into trouble,” stated the third boy. ...
... where the aim is to make use of the minimal theoretical apparatus and concludes that fruitf... more ... where the aim is to make use of the minimal theoretical apparatus and concludes that fruitful research into structural aspects of intrasentential code switching can be carried out within the framework of minimalist syntax (see also MacSwan, 2004, 2005; Gonzalez, 2007). ...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2008
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a rapidly expanding field of research, conducted in a wi... more Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a rapidly expanding field of research, conducted in a wide variety of disciplines, including linguistics. To date, however, the majority of research undertaken on CMC has focused on English and very little attention has been paid to CMC in languages other than English. The internet is no longer the monolingual, English-dominated space it was at its inception. It is now far more representative of the multilingual global world whose communication it facilitates, and this should be reflected by the research undertaken in this domain. There is, therefore, a growing need for sociolinguistic research on how people actually communicate on this 'multilingual internet' . Against this background, this paper examines, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the characteristics of Afrikaans-English code switching on internet relay chat (IRC). IRC is a very popular system of CMC. Communication on IRC, although written, is largely synchronous, and as such has been compared with face-to-face communication. The data examined in this paper consist of logs of IRC interactions in public IRC channels on irc.sun.ac.za (the Stellenbosch University IRC server) and logs of interaction on local hubs in DC++ (a file-sharing application that allows for synchronous chatting).
... Our analysis showed that speakers do not always speak in full sentences during spontaneousspe... more ... Our analysis showed that speakers do not always speak in full sentences during spontaneousspeech. ... word in each turn, but it is not as easy to do so for Chinese text. ... 2006 [11] YC Chan, PC Ching, Tan Lee and Houwei Cao "Automatic speech recognition of Cantonese-English ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2011
ABSTRACT It is generally assumed that in code-switching (CS) switches between two languages are c... more ABSTRACT It is generally assumed that in code-switching (CS) switches between two languages are categorical, however, recent research suggests that the phonologies involved in CS are merged and bilinguals must actively suppress one language when encoding in the other. Thus, it was hypothesized that CS does not take place abruptly but that cues before the point of language change are also present. This hypothesis is tested with a corpus of Spanish-English CS examining word-initial voiceless stop VOT and the vowel in the discourse marker "like." English VOTs at CS boundaries were shorter, or more "Spanish-like," than in monolingual utterances. Preliminary results suggest Spanish VOTs at CS boundaries were shorter than in monolingual utterances, thus even more Spanish-like than monolingual Spanish utterances. The vowel of "like" in English utterances was more monophthongal and had a lower final F2 as compared to "like" in Spanish utterances. At CS boundaries, "like" began similarly to the language preceding the token and ended similarly to the language following it. For example, in a "English-like-Spanishnn" utterance, initial F2 measurements were more English-like but final measurements more Spanish-like. These results suggest code-switching boundaries are not categorical, but an area where phonologies of both languages affect productions.
ABSTRACT: This paper explores an Optimality-Theoretic approach (Prince and Smolensky, 1994) to ac... more ABSTRACT: This paper explores an Optimality-Theoretic approach (Prince and Smolensky, 1994) to account for the observed cross-linguistic patterns of code-switching. The proposal is premised on the simple assumption that code-switching strives for well-formedness. I assume that when the embedding constituents are mixed into the matrix language, the syntax operates to optimize well-formedness. I show that optimization of well-formedness in code-switching follows from the (violable) ranked constraints. I will argue that the patterns of code-switching emerge from the interactions among the ranked constraints.
... or accent evaluation con-cepts and to relabel them as speech performance or dialect in d... more ... or accent evaluation con-cepts and to relabel them as speech performance or dialect in discourse, entailing a significant realignment of sociolinguistic studies of dialect, in such a way that dialect sociolinguistics will need to address the encoding and recep-tion of dialect ...
ABSTRACT: Code-switching research has focused on spontaneous conversation, and code-switching ha... more ABSTRACT: Code-switching research has focused on spontaneous conversation, and code-switching has often been seen as a consequence of bilinguals attending to and extending the “macro” status and functions of the two languages in society, attitudes towards these languages, and their cultural connotations, for instance, the “we-code” vs. “they-code” distinction. In the Hong Kong context, code-switching to English has been primarily considered as quoting “Western” concepts and ideas, conveying referential and connotative meanings absent in Cantonese. Investigating a corpus of planned discourse, namely, Cantonese popular songs (i.e. Cantopop) in Hong Kong, this paper finds that the status and functions of English in Cantopop are more variable and flexible, beyond a mere symbol of “Western” culture or identity. Nonetheless, these functions can be attributed to the properties of the pop song genre, namely, Cantopop as poetic text, media text, and a product of pop culture; in particular, code-switching fits into the rhyming scheme, marks text structure, indexes prior texts, and conveys alternative identities.
Kodewisseling is vinnig besig om 'n kritiese faktor te word in Afrikataal-ontwikkeling en verande... more Kodewisseling is vinnig besig om 'n kritiese faktor te word in Afrikataal-ontwikkeling en verandering in Suid-Afrika se meertalige en multikulturele gemeenskap. Hierdie artikel doen verslag oor Zulu T1-sprekers se motivering vir en houding teenoor kodewisseling. Die data wat hier bespreek word, is afkomstig uit drie bronne: vraelyste, onderhoude en persoonlike waarnemings. Die bespreking van die data is gegrond op huidige teoretiese navorsingsraamwerke op the gebied van kodewisseling. Hierby word ingesluit die ‘markedness’ model, spraakakkomodasie-teorie, die interaksionele model en die gespreksmodel vir kodewisseling. Voorlopige bevindings word bespreek en hulle implikasies vir navorsing op die gebied van kodewisseling in Suid-Afrika word aangedui.Code-switching is fast becoming a critical factor in African language development and change in South Africa's multilingual and multicultural society. This article reports on Zulu L1 speakers' motivations for and attitudes towards code-switching. The data discussed in this article comes from three sources: questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. The discussion of the data is informed by current theoretical frameworks in code-switching research, including the markedness model, speech accommodation theory, the interactional model, and the conversational code-switching model. Preliminary findings are presented and their implications for code-switching research in South Africa are considered.
The revised hierarchical model (RHM) of bilingual language processing posits independent word for... more The revised hierarchical model (RHM) of bilingual language processing posits independent word form representations for the dominant language (L1) and the nondominant language (L2), facilitated translation from L2 words to L1 words, access to common concepts for L1 and L2, and stronger activation of concepts for L1 than for L2. Spanish-English and English-Spanish bilinguals brainstormed for two sessions; half switched languages (L1-L2 or L2-L1) and half stayed in the same language (L1-L1 or L2-L2) across sessions. In both sessions, L1 brainstorming resulted in more efficient idea productivity than L2 brainstorming, supporting stronger concept activation for L1, consistent with the RHM. Switching languages from L2 to L1 resulted in the most efficient idea productivity in Session 2, suggesting that switching to L1 not only permits strong concept activation, but also the activation of concepts that are relatively different than those activated by L2, inconsistent with the RHM. Switching languages increased the proportion of Session 1 ideas repeated during Session 2, despite instructions not to repeat. This finding suggests that there is activation of concepts as well as word forms in same language brainstorming and that this dual activation aids in following instructions not to repeat, consistent with the RHM. It is suggested that the RHM be re-specified to accommodate the notion that L1 and L2 access relatively different concepts.
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interpretative evaluation of current approaches to the systemati... more ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interpretative evaluation of current approaches to the systematic study of code-switching and other related phenomena of language contact such as code-mixing and borrowing.1 Code-switching is regarded as a skilled discourse strategy that bilingual or multilingual speakers can exploit both socially and semantically in bilingual or multilingual settings. The paper introduces a type of conceptual code-switching that reflects that code-contact should be studied from a sociolin-guistic (code-alternations) and psycholinguistic (code-alterations) perspective. The focus will be less on a structural description of code-contact but on the potential of code-switching as a complex language contact phenomenon with regard to English as a world language.
... Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002, p. 70) compare congruence checking to feature checking w... more ... Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002, p. 70) compare congruence checking to feature checking within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995): “Congruence checking at the lemma level verifies that the abstract structures projected by a content morpheme are congruent ...
This paper examines the presence of English-origin discourse markers in otherwise Croatian speech... more This paper examines the presence of English-origin discourse markers in otherwise Croatian speech. Previous examinations of bilingual discourse marking have focused on habitualisation, pragmatic transference, cognitive processes (in terms of reducing the ‘mental load’ of distinguishing between two systems) or psycholinguistic factors (e.g. ‘non-deactivation’ of pragmatic forms from one language which speakers habitually speak). However, such studies only address transference of pragmatic norms, whether features and/or forms. They have limited explanatory power where speakers employ discourse forms from one language and equivalent forms from the other language. This study examines the frequency and functionality of English-origin forms compared to Croatian ones in a sample based on speech recordings of 100 Croatian–English bilinguals. Findings here show that English forms generally co-occur with Croatian forms in a statistical sense and only displace Croatian ones where English forms are polyfunctional or perform more functions that their Croatian counterparts. This accounts for the higher statistical frequency of forms such as yeah and so, while forms such as no and you know co-occur to the same degree as their Croatian equivalents. Where a Croatian item such as kao (‘like’) can fulfil more functions than its English equivalent it is shown to have a higher incidence than like. Thus, linguistic, in particular micro-discourse, features are shown to influence selection of discourse markers.
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