Publications
Publication details [#50924]
Allen, Shanley E.M., Fred Genesee, Sarah Fish and Martha Crago. 2009. Typological constraints on code mixing in Inuktitut–English bilingual adults. In Mahieu, Marc-Antoine and Nicole Tersis, eds. Variations on Polysynthesis. The Eskaleut languages. (Typological Studies in Language 86). John Benjamins. pp. 273–306.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
Patterns of code mixing vary according to relative typology of the languages and sociolinguistics of the contact situation (e.g., Muysken 2000). This paper extends understanding of the factors involved by analyzing for the first time mixing between an isolating Germanic language (English) and a polysynthetic Eskimo–Aleut language (Inuktitut). The adult bilinguals mixed English and Inuktitut in about 5% of the almost 17,000 utterances analyzed. Over half of the mixes comprised a single noun or verb root from one language (usually English) in an utterance of the other. Another third were tags or quotes from one language in an utterance of the other. Very few mixes involved phrases from each language as is common with typologically similar languages (e.g., Spanish–English, Poplack 1980).