Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New perspectives
Edited by Chiara Fedriani and Andrea Sansó
[Studies in Language Companion Series 186] 2017
► pp. 439–457

Chapter 16
Functional markers in llanito code-switching

Regular patterns in Gibraltar’s bilingual speech

| University of Bologna

Several studies have demonstrated that, in situations of language contact, discourse markers, pragmatic markers and modal particles are easily transferable from one language into the other. This contribution tries to examine how does this process take place in bilingual speech, and it discusses data from a corpus of bilingual conversations from Gibraltar. It is argued that switching of discourse and pragmatic markers, as well as modal expressions, is an extremely frequent phenomenon and, more interestingly, that regularities in this process can be found, in the form of regular and recurrent bilingual patterns. These functional elements in fact are shown to behave consistently with each other, allowing to identify class-specific patterns, and with other discourse-relevant entities such as left dislocations and pseudo-clefts.

Keywords: code switching, Gibraltar, thetical grammar, functional markers, information structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Functional markers in bilingual speech
  • 2.Data and methods
    • 2.1Code switching in Gibraltar
    • 2.2Regular patterns in code switching
  • 3.Pragmatic markers
    • 3.1 No : Turn yielding, agreement and something more
    • 3.2 Mira as an attention getter
  • 4.Textual relations
    • 4.1Beyond discourse markers
  • 5.Modality and illocution
    • 5.1Modality
    • 5.2Markers of illocution
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.186.17gor
References
Algeo, John
1988 The tag question in British English: It’s different, i’n’t? English World Wide 9: 171–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Álvarez Cáccamo, Celso
1998 From switching code to code-switching. Towards a reconceptualization of communicative codes. In Code-switching in Conversation. Language, Interaction and Identity, Peter Auer (ed.), 29–48. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter
1995 The pragmatics of code-switching: A sequential approach. In One Speaker, Two Languages, Lesley Milroy & Pieter Muysken (eds), 115–135. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects. Toward a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism 3: 309–332. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Language mixing and language fusion: When bilingual talk becomes monolingual. In Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change, Juliane Besters-Dilger, Cynthia Dermarkar, Stefan Pfänder & Achim Rabus (eds), 294–336. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berretta, Monica
2002 Quello che voglio dire che: Le scisse da strutture topicalizzanti a connettivi testuali. In La parola al testo. Scritti per Bice Mortara Garavelli, Gian Luigi Beccaria & Carla Marello (eds), 15–31. Alessandria: Dell'Orso.Google Scholar
Berruto, Gaetano
1987 Lingua, dialetto, diglossia, dilalia. In Romania et Slavia adriatica. Festschrift für Žarko Muljačić, Gunther Holtus & Johannes Kramer (eds), 57–92. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
1995 Fondamenti di sociolinguistica. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Fleischman, Suzanne
1995 Modality in Grammar and Discourse [Typological Studies in Language 32]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, Peter C.
1991 Cleft and Pseudo-cleft Constructions in English. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dik, Simon
1997  The Theory of Functional Grammar , Vol 2: Complex and Derived Constructions. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Fedriani, Chiara, Ghezzi, Chiara & Van Olmen, Daniël
2012 Imperatives of perception verbs as attention-getting devices: A typological study. Paper presented at the 45th annual meeting of SLE. Stockholm, August 2012.
Ghezzi, Chiara & Molinelli, Piera
(eds) 2014 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages [Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics]. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghezzi, Chiara
2014 The development of discourse and pragmatic markers. Ghezzi & Molinelli (eds), 10–28.Google Scholar
Goria, Eugenio
2015 Il discorso bilingue a Gibilterra. L’emergere di schemi regolari nella commutazione di codice. PhD dissertation, Università di Pavia.Google Scholar
2016 The role of extra-clausal constituents in code-switching. Regular patterns in a bilingual corpus. In Kaltenböck et al. (eds), 273–302.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John
1964 Hindi-Punjabi code-switching in Delhi. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics, Horace J. Lunt (ed.), 1115–1124. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K.
1970 Language structure and language function. In New Horizons in Linguistics, John Lyons (ed.), 140–165. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd
2013 On discourse markers. Grammaticalization, Pragmaticalization or something else? Linguistics 51(6): 1205–1247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Extra-clausal constituents, theticals, and language contact. In Kaltenböck et al. (eds), 243–272.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther, Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania
2011 On thetical grammar. Studies in Language 35: 852–897. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther, Evelien Keizer & Arne Lohmann
(eds) 2016 Outside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-clausal Constituents [Studies in Language Companion Series 178]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kellerman, Anja
2001 A New New English. Language, Politics and Identity in Gibraltar. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Schriften zur Sprache und Kultur.Google Scholar
Kramer, Johannes
1986 English and Spanish in Gibraltar. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
1998 Die Sprache Gibraltars. In Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, Band VII, Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin & Christian Schmitt (eds), 310–316. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Kroon, Caroline
1995 Discourse Particles in Latin: A Study of nam, enim, autem, vero, and at. Amsterdam: Gieben.Google Scholar
Levey, David
2008a The changing face of Gibraltarian English. Th-fronting on the Rock. In Issues in Accents of English, Ewa Waniek-Klimczak (ed.), 91–102. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
2008b Language Change and Variation in Gibraltar [Varieties of English around the World G23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lipski, John
1986 Sobre el bilingüismo anglo-hispánico en Gibraltar. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 87(3): 414–427.Google Scholar
Maschler, Yael
1994 Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation. Language in Society 23(3): 325–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 On the transition from code-switching to a mixed code. In Code-Switching in Conversation, Peter Auer (ed.), 125–149. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron
1998 Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing. Linguistics 36(2): 281–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Molinelli, Piera
2014 Orientarsi nel discorso: Segnali discorsivi e segnali pragmatici in italiano. In Discorso e cultura nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana, Elena Pîrvu (ed.), 195–208. Firenze: Franco Cesati.Google Scholar
Moyer, Melissa
1998 Bilingual conversation strategies in Gibraltar. In Codeswitching in Conversation, Peter Auer (ed.), 215–236. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2000 Negotiating agreement and disagreement in Spanish-English bilingual conversations with no. International Journal of Bilingualism 4(4): 485–504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muysken, Pieter
2007 Mixed codes. In Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication, Peter Auer & Li Wei (eds), 315–339. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1993 Duelling Languages. Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Oesch-Serra, Cecilia
1998 Discourse connectives in bilingual conversation: The case of an emerging French-Italian mixed code. In Auer (ed.), 101–124.Google Scholar
Pons Bordería, Salvador
2006 A functional approach for the study of discourse markers. In Approaches to Discourse Particles [Studies in Pragmatics 1], Kerstin Fischer (ed.), 77–99. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana
1980 Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español. Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18(7–8): 581–618.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2010 Revisiting subjectification and intersubjectification. In Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization, Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte & Hubert Cuyckens (eds), 29–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar