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Spanish-English Codeswitching in the Caribbean and the US
Edited by Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo, Catherine M. Mazak and M. Carmen Parafita Couto
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 11] 2016
► pp. 261–279

On the productive use of ‘hacer + V’ in Northern Belize bilingual/trilingual codeswitching

| University of Florida
| University of Florida

We examine bilingual light verb constructions (BLVCs) in Northern Belize codeswitching by analyzing clause type, syntactic verb type, pronoun type and number of syllables in both switched and non-switched utterances. Results revealed that BLVCs appear in a rich variety of syntactic, lexical and phonological contexts. Although there were distributional trends that were similar across switched and monolingual data, BLVCs were noted for their structural complexity in terms of nominal and adverbial subordination. Also salient in these hybrid constructions was the skillful integration of Spanish pronominal features. The Northern Belize data reveal that these syntactic innovations do not only exhibit productivity and language creativity, but the optimal use of linguistic resources as well.

Keywords: bilingual compound verbs, bilingual light verb constructions, linguistic productivity and innovation, Northern Belize contact Spanish
Published online: 7 September 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.11.11bal
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