Barbara E. Bullock

The Cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching

1. Themes in the study of code-switching Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio Part I. Conceptual and Methodological Considerations in Code-switching Research: 2. Research techniques for the study of code-switching Marianne Gullberg, Peter Indefrey and Pieter Muysken 3. On the notions of congruence and convergence in code-switching Mark Sebba 4. Code-switching and transfer: an exploration of similarities and differences Jeanine Treffers-Daller 5. Loan translations versus code-switching Ad Backus and Margreet Dorleijn Part II. Social Aspects of Code-switching: 6. Sociolinguistic factors in code-switching Penelope Gardner-Chloros 7. The Conversation Analytic model of code-switching Joseph Gafaranga 8. Code-switching and the internet Margreet Dorleijn and Jacomine Nortier 9. Phonetic accommodation in childrens code-switching Ghada Khattab Part III. The Structural Implications of Code-switching: 10. Phonetic reflexes of code-switching Barbara E. Bullock 11. Code-switching between typologically distinct languages Brian Hok-Shing Chan 12. Language mixing in bilingual children: code-switching? Natascha Muller and Katja Francesca Cantone 13. Code-switching between sign languages David Quinto-Pozos Part IV. Psycholinguistics and Code-switching: 14. Code-switching and language disorders in bilingual children Adele W. Miccio, Carol Scheffner Hammer and Barbara Rodriguez 15. Code-switching, imperfect acquisition, and attrition Agnes Bolonyai 16. Code-switching and the bilingual mental lexicon Longxing Wei 17. Code-switching and the brain Marta Kutas, Eva Moreno and Nicole Wicha Part V. Formal Models of Code-switching: 18. Generative approaches to code-switching Jeff MacSwan 19. A universal model of code-switching and bilingual language processing and production Carol Myers-Scotton and Janice Jake.

Phonological convergence in a contracting language variety

Most work investigating the role of convergence in situations of language attrition has focused on the morpho-syntactic restructuring of the dying language variety. A central concern of such research has been untangling the factors driving the restructuring with an eye towards establishing whether the changes observed are best viewed as externally driven or, by contrast, as internally motivated. A second and equally important concern of this research attempts to define the domains of the linguistic system that may be the most permeable to external influence. The present study provides a contribution to this line of research and sheds light on its two leading concerns from the domain of phonology and phonetics. Specifically, we present the results of an instrumental study of the phonological vowel system of Frenchville French and argue that this linguistic variety is undergoing a perceptually striking process of phonetic convergence with English that is motivated by the auditory and acoustic similarity between a subset of vowels in the contact languages. An interesting consequence of our analysis is that bilingual phonologies may become particularly permeable to inter-linguistic influence precisely where they are acoustically and perceptually unstable, and where they are already congruent to some degree.

Introduction: Convergence as an emergent property in bilingual speech

In introducing this special issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , we feel it is critical to clarify what we understand ‘linguistic convergence’ to mean in the context of bilingualism, since ‘convergence’ is a technical term more readily associated with the field of language contact than with the field of bilingualism (for recent discussions of the role of convergence in contact see Thomason and Kaufman, 1988; Thomason, 2001; Myers-Scotton, 2002; Clyne, 2003; Winford, 2003). Within the language contact literature, the term invites a variety of uses. Some researchers adopt a definition of convergence that requires that all languages in a contact situation change, sometimes to the extent that the source of a given linguistic feature cannot be determined (see April McMahons commentary in this issue). For others, convergence may be more broadly defined to also apply to situations in which one language has undergone structural incursions of various sorts from contact with another.

Prosody in contact in French: A case study from a heritage variety in the USA

This article focuses on the prosody of heritage speakers of a minority variety of French, spoken in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, since the 1830s. Specifically, this case study focuses on three distinct supra-segmental phenomena: (i) penultimate prominence, (ii) focus via prominence in situ, and (iii) the prosody of left dislocation. Although all three phenomena appear to be convergent with the speakers’ dominant language, American English, I argue that penultimate prominence cannot be unambiguously attributed to English influence but may instead be an inheritance from the 19th-century source dialect for Frenchville. Prominence at the higher discourse levels, for the expression of information structure, can much more clearly be interpreted as contact induced. As is demonstrated here, these bilinguals use pitch accents and tonal contours for a variety of pragmatic and discursive functions in ways that are very similar to English but impossible in any attested variety of French. Despite the influence of the structure of the dominant language on the heritage language, these data cannot be easily interpreted as evidence of attrition since the usual syntactic means for the expression of information structure in French are still very much intact in this variety. This implies that contact-influenced prosodic innovations among heritage speakers may serve as additional communication resources for the expression of discourse-pragmatic distinctions rather than as mere replacement strategies.

Frenchville French: A case study in phonological attrition

This paper investigates the phonetic and phonological properties of a contracting variety of French spoken in Frenchville, PA, a linguistic enclave community. Specifically, we analyze a pattern of convergence versus preservation that cannot be convincingly explained or understood given current proposals of the process of phonological convergence and attrition in a bilingual contact situation. We demonstrate that our speakers preserve some low level information while sacrificing other phonetic details. In the case under investigation, there is a gradient replacement of the French mid front rounded vowels with an English-like rhoticized schwa but our speakers maintain language specific, phonetically distinct rhotic consonants. We argue that the patterns of loss versus maintenance that emerge are not necessarily driven by the need to preserve contrastive features with a high functional load. Equally plausible accounts for these patterns may lie in acoustic salience, the sociolinguistic marking of identity, and competition between articulatory demands.

The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching: Sociolinguistic factors in code-switching

Book synopsis: Code-switching - the alternating use of two languages in the same stretch of discourse by a bilingual speaker - is a dominant topic in the study of bilingualism and a phenomenon that generates a great deal of pointed discussion in the public domain. This handbook provides the most comprehensive guide to this bilingual phenomenon to date. Drawing on empirical data from a wide-range of language pairings, the leading researchers in the study of bilingualism examine the linguistic, social and cognitive implications of code-switching in up-to-date and accessible survey chapters. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching will serve as a vital resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as a wide-ranging overview for linguists, psychologists and speech scientists, and as an informative guide for educators interested in bilingual speech practices.

Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection

Theoretical linguistic treatments of Dominican [s]-hypercorrection all assume the hypotheses, advanced by Terrell (1986), that lexical forms in popular Dominican Spanish no longer contain any trace of coda or final /s/ and, thus, speakers randomly insert them into syllable- and word-final position (Terrell 1986; Nunez-Cedeno 1988, 1989, 1994; Harris 2002; Bradley 2006; Vaux 2001, 2002). We demonstrate that Terrell’s premises ensue from an inadequate description of Dominican [s]-insertion and, as a consequence, phonological theories based on them cannot account for the range of actual, as opposed to hypothesized, exemplars that occur in Dominican speech. Using natural data, we argue that [s]-hypercorrection is inaccurately described as a rule that targets the syllable coda and is instead much more complex.

Simple Tools for Exploring Variation in Code-switching for Linguists.

One of the benefits of language identification that is particularly relevant for code-switching (CS) research is that it permits insight into how the languages are mixed (i.e., the level of integration of the languages). The aim of this paper is to quantify and visualize the nature of the integration of languages in CS documents using simple language-independent metrics that can be adopted by linguists. In our contribution, we (a) make a linguistic case for classifying CS types according to how the languages are integrated; (b) describe our language identification system; (c) introduce an Integration-index (I-index) derived from HMM transition probabilities; (d) employ methods for visualizing integration via a language signature (or switching profile); and (e) illustrate the utility of our simple metrics for linguists as applied to Spanish-English texts of different switching profiles.

From Trujillo to the terremoto: the effect of language ideologies on the language attitudes and behaviors of the rural youth of the northern Dominican border

Abstract Our work examines the residual effects of three quarters of a century of anti-Haitian propaganda on the language attitudes and ideologies of contemporary children in the northern Dominican Republic. Focused on interviews with 90 Dominican fronterizo children and adolescents, many of whom are descendants of Haitians themselves, our findings reveal that their attitudes towards Haitian Creole mirror broader negative assessments of its speakers. In their reluctance to learn Creole (or French, which they associate almost exclusively with Haiti), these rural Dominicans choose linguistic isolation. Thus, although the number of Haitian immigrants in the northern border region has dramatically increased since the earthquake, the burden of intercultural communication will likely remain on them.

The linguistic representation of femininity and masculinity in Jean Genet's Notre-Dame des Fleurs:

Address for correspondence: Dr Denis M. Provencher, Department of Foreign Languages, 315 Graff Main Hall, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, La Crosse, WI 54601. E-mail: provench.deni@uwlax.edu. Jean Genet is both praised and reviled for his raw depiction of the arbitrary nature of how masculine and feminine roles are reproduced in a homosexual society. Kate Millet chose to close her groundbreaking book of feminist literary criticism, Sexual Politics (1975), with a chapter dedicated to the writings of Jean Genet who she claimed was the ’only living writer of firstclass literary gift to have transcended the sexual myths of our era’.1 For Millet, Genet’s works magnificently illustrated that the terms ’masculine’ and ’feminine’ do not refer to biologically determined categories but social roles: