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Code-switching – Experimental Answers to Theoretical Questions: In honor of Kay González-Vilbazo
Edited by Luis López
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 19] 2018
► pp. 223–256

Basque complementizers under the microscope

A Spanish/Basque code-switching approach

| Assistant Professor of Spanish Dept., of Foreign Langs. & Lits., Auburn UniversityHaley [email protected]

In this chapter, I argue against the view that Basque complementizers occupy the head of FinP in the left periphery (cf. Ortiz de Urbina, 1999; Artiagoitia and Elordieta, 2016). Based on bilinguals’ acceptability judgments of complement clauses in Spanish/Basque code-switching, I propose that the Basque complementizer -enik is the spell out form of the features [finite], [force] and an interpretable anti-veridical polarity feature in Force0. The complementizer -ela, on the other hand, can either spell out the features [finite] and [force] or just the feature [finite]. Furthermore, this chapter provides supporting evidence that the phenomenon of complementizer duplication in Spanish/Basque code-switching can be accounted for by assuming a single system for spelling out syntactic terminals in bilinguals.

Keywords: code-switching, Spanish/Basque, Basque complementizers, Finite, Force, anti-veridical, complementizer duplication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Syntactic assumptions
    • 2.2The Basque complementizers ‑ela and ‑enik
    • 2.3The Spanish complementizer que
    • 2.4Previous analyses of the Basque complementizer ‑enik
    • 2.5Code-switching from a minimalist and distributed morphology perspective
  • 3.Predictions
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Stimuli
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Monolingual results for Spanish and Basque
    • 5.2Spanish/Basque code-switching results
  • 6.Proposal and analysis
    • 6.1Derivation of Spanish and Basque monolingual sentences
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abbreviations used in glosses
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.19.09ver
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