Academic literature on the topic 'Code switching and code mixing (Linguistics)'

This thesis examined several possible explanations for young bilingual children's code-mixing: the unitary language system (ULS) hypothesis, parental rates of code-mixing, parental discourse strategies in response to children's code-mixing, and children's language dominance. These explanations were examined in six French-English bilingual children, observed between the ages of 18 and 30 months. They were observed separately in interaction with each of their parents. The results showed that the ULS hypothesis cannot explain children's language use. Similarly, parental input could not explain children's code-mixing. In contrast, children's dominance was shown to be the best explanation of their code-mixing. It was suggested that bilingual children are particularly likely to code-mix when they do not know a translation equivalent. These results suggest that bilingual children's code-mixing is largely due to performance factors rather than underlying competence.

This study examined structural constraints on early child code mixing. Constraints are widely attested in adult bilinguals (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). It has been argued that these constraints preserve the structural properties of both languages. It is uncertain whether constraints on early child code mixing are the same as constraints on adult code mixing. The present analysis was based on Poplack's two structural constraints: the free morpheme and the equivalence constraints. Ten French-English bilingual subjects were observed at 4 time periods, between approximately 2;00 and 3;06 years of age. The children's utterances containing elements from both languages were analysed for violations of Poplack's constraints. The violation rate was extremely low, less than 2% of the total mixed utterances. These results corroborate Lanza (1997), Vihman (1998), Allen et al. (2000), and Paradis et al. (2000), who likewise found that structural constraints on code mixing are operational from early in acquisition.

Being a British colony for more than a century, Hong Kong has been influenced by the western culture in multiple aspects. One of the prominent western footprints is the ubiquitous Cantonese-English code switching and code mixing behavior which permeates all walks of life in this bilingual community. Though having seen its pervasiveness in different domains, limited studies from the sociolinguistic perspective have been conducted in the broadcasting domain, especially within the radio broadcast domain. This research gap prompts a study idea to unravel the sociolinguistic motivations behind the Cantonese-English code switching and code mixing behavior in Hong Kong radio broadcasts. Instances of code-switched and code-mixed which happened during the conversations among radio hosts were transcribed from the broadcasts of Commercial Radio Hong Kong (CRHK) between April 26th and May 24th 2013 for exploratory analysis. The language alternation behavior was investigated through a communicative discourse context. In essence, the reasons motivating code switching and code mixing behavior among radio hosts include ‘principle of economy’, ‘generality/ specificity’, ‘euphemism’ and ‘emotional buffer’. Code switching/ code mixing also serves as a purposeful communicative strategy in tone switching or creating comical effect to enhance the entertainment value of the programs. It also helps the speakers to portray a particular social orientation or specifically, to project a western image. By code switching/ code mixing, the hosts also take into consideration of the societal preference of codes. The ideas of ‘we-code’, ‘they-code’, and ‘social distance’ are also applicable in exploring the social meaning of code switching/ code mixing within the Hong Kong radio broadcasts.<br>published_or_final_version<br>English Studies<br>Master<br>Master of Arts

Code-mixing, defined as intra-sentential language alternation, is known to demonstrate structurally determined patterns of restriction. Universal constraints have been proposed to account for these structural restrictions (Poplack (1980), Woolford (1983), Di Sciullo, Muysken and Singh (1986)) but have had limited success in accounting for code-mixing between typologically diverse languages. This thesis examines the structural principles that apply universally to the interaction of languages in code-mixed sentences. We argue that systematic cross-linguistic restrictions on code-mixing can be accounted for by a syntactic constraint that is sensitive to the distinction between functional and lexical categories.<br>We propose the constraint of Language Indexation, according to which (structurally) adjacent categories of like functional/lexical category status must be realised in the same language. We show how this proposal accounts for code-mixed data from a range of language pairs, including Tagalog/English, Moroccan Arabic/French, Swahili/English, Irish/English, Hindi/English, Spanish/English and French/English. A difference in the application of Language Indexation in nominal versus verbal projections is discussed with reference to Tagalog/English and Moroccan Arabic/French code-mixing. Finally, we briefly examine the implications of Language Indexation with respect to the code-mixing of aphasic bilinguals.