On the emergence of bilingual code-switching competence (Toribio, 2001)

🚩 The guiding question: whether and how L2 learners acquire the knowledge that defines structural coherence and allows them to render sound judgements for code-switched forms.

Code-switching and emergent bilingual competence

Generative-syntactic constraints

THE STUDY!!

Spanish-English code-switching as rule-governed bilingual behavior

Reaffirming the validity of the FHC

Surface constraints

Intra-sentential code-switching is limited to speakers with a high degree of bilingual competence.

code-switching: social studies and syntactical studies

not irregular, but rule-governed and systematic

❓Do they look acceptable to you? a. Toda mi familia speaks English well. (All of my family speaks English well.) b. Five of my cousins have completado estudios universotarios. (Five of my cousins have completed university studies.) :

Bilinguals seem to exhibit a shared knowledge of which code-switching forms are appropriate, in the absence of overt instruction.

An innate system (Universal Grammar)?

Equivalence Constraint and Free Morpheme Constraint (Poplack, 1980)

challenges from empirical evidence and on theoretical grounds

Government Constraint (DiSciullo et al., 1986)

Functional Head Constraint (Belazi et al., 1994)

Generative Model (Woolford, 1983)

⭐"The language feature of the complement f-selected by a functional head, like all other relevant features, must match the corresponding feature of that functional head."

See examples on page 209; the case of "the borracho"

Code-switching is disallowed between a syntactic functional head and its complement, but permissible between a lexical head and its complement.

many merits of FHC theory

empirical considerations

syntactic-theoretical considerations

methodological considerations

corroborating evidence

code-switching among adult L2 learners

code-switching in early childhood bilingualism

The FHC, linguistic theory, and psycholinguistic models

Tasks

Participants

Results

Hypothesis

Conclusions

natural recording or grammatical judgment: the difficulty of determining syntactic competence of the speaker

the authenticity of data: what counts as code-switching and what not

different processing time with code-switching at different boundaries (Sunderman 2000); different patterns of reading and writing behavior with consistent vs switched text (Toribio, 2000)

(incorrect) criticism from Nishimura (1997)

The acquisition of functional categories is crucial in developing such sensitivity.

Bilinguals demonstrated significantly longer time to process switches that do not correspond to phrasal boundaries, while L2 learners didn't. (Rakowsky, 1989)

The advanced L2 learners repeated ill-formed switched sentences slower, while beginning and intermediate learners didn't differentiate. (Toribio, 1993)

The intermediate participants accepted ungrammatical switched sentences while the advanced ones didn't. (Bhatia and Ritchie, 1996, 1998)

Young children lack the grammatical competence, and their language alterations cannot be classified as code-switching, but mixing. (not guided by syntactic principles)

The degree of language proficiency in two languages correlates with the type of code-switching done: speakers dominant in one language tend to tag-switch, while balanced and proficient speakers have a greater sensitivity to grammatical constraints on switching.

Code-switching patterns may be used to measure bilingual ability (Poplack, 1980)

A questionnaire of 44 sentences (see examples and distribution on page 220); judgement based on acceptability, not grammaticality; judgement task, not preference task (a, b, a and b, neither)

A introspective survey

Switching at other major junctures

Cross-category comparisons

Switching at lexical junctures

Switching at functional junctures

Increased L2 competence will correlate with increased success at rejecting ill-formed switches.

(n=104): 44 beginners (one semester of Spanish), 26 intermediate learners (three semesters), 34 advanced learners (six semesters)

significant difference between advanced and intermediate/beginner; no significant difference between the latter two; most significant contrasts in COMP and QUANT/NUM. ⁉

overall acceptance rates was high; same between group pattern as the last one; most significant contrast in VERB.

no significant difference for switching at the subject-predicate boundary; significant difference between advanced and the other two for switching at adjunct modifier.

All three groups' responses to functional juncture items are significantly different from lexical and clausal ones; additionally, advanced and intermediate groups demonstrate significant difference between lexical and clausal ones.

Introspective survey

(see page 223) following unconscious linguistic principles vs a strategy of translation

The rule-governed nature of code-switching is upheld by even the non-fluent bilinguals, indicating an emerging sensitivity to f-selection.

Bilinguals with higher competence in both languages exhibit a greater sensitivity to the patterns of code-switching.

establishing FHC as characterizing code-switching