Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 5:3 (2015) ► pp.379–407

Code-switching at the auxiliary-VP boundary

A comparison of heritage speakers and L2 learners

| Rutgers University
While early code-switching research (i.e., Poplack, 1980) focused on the possibility of universal constraints on switching, MacSwan’s (2010, 2014) “Constraint-Free” research program centers on the notion that code-switching is only constrained by the interaction of a bilingual’s two grammars. In following with this proposal, the current study examines whether two types of Spanish-English bilinguals are equally sensitive to the (un)grammaticality of Spanish-English code-switching at the subject-predicate and auxiliary-verb phrase boundaries. Twenty-five heritage Spanish speakers and forty-four L2 Spanish learners completed an Audio Naturalness Judgment Task in which they judged grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish-English code-switching at these two syntactic junctions. Results indicate that the L2 Spanish speakers and the heritage bilinguals, regardless of their self-reported exposure to code-switching, correctly differentiated between grammatical and ungrammatical switches, suggesting that they have implicit knowledge of code-switching grammaticality which falls out from syntactic knowledge of the two languages.
Keywords: code-switching, code-mixing, L2 acquisition, heritage speakers, morphosyntax
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Constraint-Based (CB) and Constraint-Free (CF) approaches to CS
    • 2.1Constraints on CS
    • 2.2Constraint-Based Approaches: The Functional Head Constraint
    • 2.3The Constraint-Free (CF) approach to CS
  • 3.CS and Second language (L2) learners
  • 4.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Tasks
      • 5.2.1Audio naturalness judgment task
      • 5.2.2DELE proficiency exam
      • 5.2.3Language background questionnaire
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Subject-predicate CS
    • 6.2Auxiliary-VP CS
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.5.3.04gia
References (37)
References
Abney. (1987).The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Ph.D. Dissertation. MIT.Google Scholar
Aguirre, A. (1985). An experimental study of code alternation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 531, 59–81.Google Scholar
Anderson, T. (2006). Spanish-English bilinguals’ attitudes toward code-switching: proficiency, grammaticality, and familiarity. Doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Anderson, T., & Toribio, J. (2007). Attitudes towards lexical borrowing and intrasentential code-switching among Spanish-English bilinguals. Spanish in Context, 41, 217–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belazi, H., Rubin, E. & Toribio, A.J. (1994). Code Switching and X-Bar Theory: The Functional Head Constraint. Linguistic Inquiry 25(2), 221–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carnie, A. (2000). On the definition of X0 and XP. Syntax, 3(2), 59–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DiSciullo, A., Muysken, P., & Singh, R. (1986). Code mixing and government. Journal of Linguistics 221, 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dussias, P.E. (2003). Spanish-English code-mixing at the auxiliary phrase: Evidence from eye movement data. Revista Internacional de Linguüística Iberoamericana, 21, 7–34.Google Scholar
García Mayo, P., & Slabakova, R. (in press). Object drop in L3 acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism.
Giancaspro, D. (2013). L2 learners’ and Heritage speakers’ judgments of code-switching at the auxiliary-VP boundary. In J. Cabrelli-Amaro, G. Lord, A. de Prada, & J. Aaron (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 16th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 56–69). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Grabowski, J. (2011). Stability of grammaticality judgments in German-English code-switching. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Arizona State University. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Guzzardo Tamargo, R. (2012). Linking comprehension costs to production patterns during the processing of mixed language. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Guzzardo Tamargo, R., & Dussias, P. (2013). Processing of Spanish-English code-switches by Late Bilinguals. In S. Baiz, N. Goldman, & R. Hawkes (Eds.), BUCLD 37: Proceedings of the 37th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Volume 11 (pp. 134–146). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Herring, J., Deuchar, M., Parafita Couto, M.C., & Moro Quintanilla, M. (2010). I saw ‘the madre’: Evaluating predictions about code-switched determiner-noun sequences using Spanish-English and Welsh-English data. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(5), 553–573. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joshi, A. (1985). Processing sentences with intra-sentential code-mixing. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunen, & A. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing (pp. 190–205). New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lipski, J. (1978). Code-switching and the problem of bilingual competence. In M. Paradis (Ed.), Aspects of bilingualism (pp. 250–264). Columbia: Hornbeam.Google Scholar
McAlister. (2010). Age of onset of exposure in codeswitching. Unpublished dissertation, Arizona State University.
MacSwan, J. (1999). A minimalist approach to intrasentential code switching. New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar
. (2000). The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: Evidence from intrasentential code switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 37–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2005). Précis of a minimalist approach to intrasentential code-switching. Rivista di Linguistica, 17 (1), 55–92.Google Scholar
. (2009). Generative approaches to code-switching, In Bullock, B.E. & Toribio, A.J. (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching (pp. 309–335) New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2010). Plenary address: Unconstraining codeswitching theories. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 44 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. (2013). Code switching and linguistic theory. In T.K. Bhatia & W. Ritchie (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism, (2nd edition) (pp. 223–250). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. (2014). Programs and proposals in codeswitching research: unconstraining theories of bilingual language mixing. In J. MacSwan (Ed.), Grammatical theory and bilingual codeswitching (pp. 1–33.). Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacSwan, J., & McAlister, K.T. (2010). Naturalistic and elicited data in grammatical studies of codeswitching. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, 3(2), 521–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacSwan, J., & Colina, S. (2014). Some consequences of language design: Unconstraining theories of bilingual language mixing. In J. MacSwan (Ed.), Grammatical theory and bilingual code-switching. Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mahootian, S. (1993). A null theory of codeswitching. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Evanston: Northwestern University. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McClure, E. (1981). Formal and functional aspects of the codeswitched discourse of bilingual children. In Duran, R.P. (Ed.), Latino Language and Communicative Behavior (pp. 69–94) Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Slabakova, R. (2003). Competence similarities between native and near-native speakers: An investigation of the preterite/imperfect contrast in Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 251, 351–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English y termino en español, Linguistics, 18 (7/8), 581–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1981). Syntactic structure and social function of code-switching. In Duran, R. (Ed.), Latino Language and Communicative Behavior (pp. 169–184). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Potowski, K., & Bolyanatz, M. (2011). Reactions to (in)felicitous code-switching: heritage speakers vs. L2 learners. In K. Geeslin & M. Díaz-Campos (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 14th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 116–129). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toribio, J. (2001). On the emergence of bilingual code-switching competence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 41, 203–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2001). Accessing bilingual code-switching competence. International Journal of Bilingualism, 51, 403–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I.M., & Dimitrakopoulou, M. (2007). The interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 231, 215–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Gelderen, E., & MacSwan, J. (2008). Interface conditions and code-switching: Pronouns, lexical DP’s and checking theory. Lingua, 1181, 765–776. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics and philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (18)

Cited by 18 other publications

Salig, Lauren K., Jorge R. Valdés Kroff, L. Robert Slevc & Jared M. Novick
2024. Linking frequency to bilingual switch costs during real-time sentence comprehension. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 27:1 ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
de Prada Pérez, Ana, Nicholas Feroce & Lillian Kennedy
2023. The use of default forms in codeswitching. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:4 ► pp. 439 ff. DOI logo
Zhong, Zilong & Lin Fan
2023. Worldwide Trend Analysis of Psycholinguistic Research on Code Switching Using Bibliometrix R-tool. Sage Open 13:4 DOI logo
Gosselin, Leah
2022. Bilinguals have a single computational system but two compartmentalized phonological grammars: Evidence from code-switching. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1 DOI logo
Feroce, Nick, Ana de Prada Pérez & Lillian Kennedy
2021. What Can L2ers Tell Us about Codeswitching? Mood Selection in Spanish. Languages 6:4 ► pp. 200 ff. DOI logo
Tsoukala, Chara, Stefan L. Frank, Antal Van Den Bosch, Jorge Valdés Kroff & Mirjam Broersma
2021. Modeling the auxiliary phrase asymmetry in code-switched Spanish–English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24:2 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Cabrelli, Jennifer, Michael Iverson, David Giancaspro & Becky Halloran González
2020. The roles of L1 Spanish versus L2 Spanish in L3 Portuguese morphosyntactic development. In Linguistic Approaches to Portuguese as an Additional Language [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 24], ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo
López, Luis
2020. Bilingual Grammar, DOI logo
Sequeros-Valle, Jose, Bradley Hoot & Jennifer Cabrelli
2020. Clitic-Doubled Left Dislocation in Heritage Spanish: Judgment versus Production Data. Languages 5:4 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo
Sequeros-Valle, Jose, Bradley Hoot & Jennifer Cabrelli
2020. Clitic-doubled left dislocation in L2 Spanish: The effect of processing load at the syntax-discourse interface. Language Acquisition 27:3 ► pp. 306 ff. DOI logo
Ebert, Shane & Bryan Koronkiewicz
2018. Monolingual stimuli as a foundation for analyzing code-switching data. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8:1 ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Koronkiewicz, Bryan
2018. Acquiring L1-English L2-Spanish Code-Switching: The Role of Exposure to Language Mixing. Languages 3:3 ► pp. 26 ff. DOI logo
Koronkiewicz, Bryan
2019. Control Stimuli in Experimental Code-Switching Research. Languages 4:3 ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo
Koronkiewicz, Bryan
2020. Subject-predicate code-switching. In Hispanic Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 26], ► pp. 250 ff. DOI logo
Li, Rui, Zhiyi Zhang, Chuanbin Ni, Wei Xiao, Junyan Wei & Haoyun Dai
2018. Examining the Functional Category in Chinese–English Code-Switching: Evidence from the Eye-Movements. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 47:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Valdés Kroff, Jorge R., Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo & Paola E. Dussias
2018. Experimental contributions of eye-tracking to the understanding of comprehension processes while hearing and reading code-switches. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8:1 ► pp. 98 ff. DOI logo
López, Luis, Artemis Alexiadou & Tonjes Veenstra
2017. Code-Switching by Phase. Languages 2:3 ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo
MacSwan, Jeff
2017. A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging. American Educational Research Journal 54:1 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.