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Article published In:
Romance Parsed Corpora
Edited by Christina Tortora, Beatrice Santorini and Frances Blanchette
[Linguistic Variation 18:1] 2018
► pp. 120–143
Special issue articles

Analyzing the structure of code-switched written texts

The case of Guarani-Spanish Jopara in the novel Ramona Quebranto

| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As more written language data become available, the interest in written language mixing / codeswitching (LM/CS) is increasing (Sebba, Mahootian & Jonsson 2012; Sebba 2013). LM/CS in non-naturalistic (e.g., literary) texts raises issues related to gauging (1) the authenticity and representativity of a textual corpus, and deciding (2) whether categories/mechanisms of spoken LM/CS apply to written LM/CS. [1] 1 We focus on Guarani-Spanish LM/CS (Jopara) as represented in the Paraguayan novel Ramona Quebranto (RQ). We apply the framework of Muysken (1997; 2000; 2013), developed as a taxonomy of spoken LM/CS. Our contribution extends its applicability to written LM/CS. We show that Jopara has a mix of insertional and backflagging strategies, with infrequent alternations.

Keywords: language mixing, codeswitching, literary corpora, insertion, alternation, backflagging, authenticity, naturalistic language, matrix language, composite ML
Article outline
  • 1.Guarani and Jopara in Paraguay
  • 2.The corpus: The novel Ramona Quebranto
    • 2.1The authenticity of our corpus
    • 2.2Applying spoken CS models to written CS
  • 3.Muysken’s typology of CS
  • 4.Application of Muysken’s model to RQ
    • 4.1Insertional strategy
      • 4.1.1With morphological integration
        • 4.1.1.1Guarani SV agreement on inserted Spanish verbs
        • 4.1.1.2Guarani negation on inserted Spanish verbs
        • 4.1.1.3Modification by the suffix -ete
        • 4.1.1.4Guarani -ma suffix
        • 4.1.1.5Future marker -ta
      • 4.1.2Insertions without morphological integration
        • 4.1.2.1Insertion of Guarani N/NP
        • 4.1.2.3Guarani V/VP insertions
        • 4.1.2.4Adjective insertions
    • 4.2Backflagging strategy
      • 4.2.1Interrogative markers
      • 4.2.2Emphatic and evidential markers
      • 4.2.3Tag and interjection insertions
      • 4.2.4Guarani gua’u constructions
      • 4.2.5Imperatives and requests
      • 4.2.6Plural -kuéra
      • 4.2.7Nominal temporal marker -kue
      • 4.2.8Postpositional locative -pe
    • 4.3Alternational strategy
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00007.est
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