Also, languages do not supply morpheme types equally. The 4-M model and a uniform structure principle explain different morpheme distributions with more precision (cf. Myers-Scotton and Jake 2009). Still other researchers argue that current syntactic theory of mainstream generative grammar, though intended for monolingual data, can explain CS parisomiously (MacSwan 2000).

Most analysts agree that CS has a principled grammatical structure, but the principles they propose to constrain sentence/clause structure vary. Many early studies employed a linear-based framework; for example, Shana Poplack (1980) argues that possible switching depends on surface-level syntactic equivalences across participating languages.

Codeswitching (CS) is defined as the use of two or more language varieties in the same conversation, not counting established borrowed words or phrases. Two general types of structural configurations occur. 1) Intersentential CS, switches for one sentence or many, is generally studied for its social implications (1). 2) Intrasentential or intraclausal CS is more studied for its grammatical configurations (2–4).

CS researchers agree on two points: 1) To engage in CS is largely an unconscious move, and 2) speakers seldom intend a single, specific meaning; potentially ambiguous or multiple meanings are part of the pragmatic message.

Two overlapping generalizations capture differences in various approaches. First, the meaning of strategy, with its implication that CS carries messages of intentionality, divides analysts. Second, analysts differ on the role of community values and participants’ own sociolinguistic profiles, as well as a variety’s multiple associations, as they relate to a speaker’s motivation for making a switch.

Many studies remain at the descriptive level, but at least two models offer explanations for why CS occurs within a discourse. conversation analysis (CA) analysts emphasize a switch’s sequential positioning in conversation, claiming that it provides vital information about its sociopragmatic message (Auer 1998 inter alia; Li 2005).

CS is a means of presenting a particular persona or negotiating interpersonal relationships in a given interaction, making it a major research topic for some sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists. A starting point is John J. Gumperz’s (1982) notion that CS is one of the possible “contextualization cues” of the speaker’s pragmatic intentions. Also, researchers often mention E. Goffman’s concept of “footing,” and M. Bakhtin’s concept of speakers’ “multiple voices” that are echoes of earlier utterances.

permits code-switching only at points where the surface structure of the two languages map onto each other.

Another important contribution to the literature on structural constraints in code-switching came from the work of Aravind Joshi (1985). He observed that closed class items, e.g., determiners, quantifiers, prepositions, possessive, Aux, Tense, helping verbs. etc., were most recalcitrant to switching

Sridhar and Sridhar thus introduced a conceptualization of code-switching where the participating languages were assumed to have asymmetric roles: the host language provides the constituent structure of the entire code-switched utterance and the guest language provides elements into the host language.

The grammaticality contrast in (6) below illustrates how their constraint works. (6a) is the grammatical option because the V(erb), with language index E(nglish), governs, and therefore requires, the specifier (your) of the object NP to carry the same language index, which it does.

The real challenge then was to couch the proposals in generative grammatical theory so that theoretical models of code-switching could be developed, ones that made claims about the bilingual's language competence.

. Ma

ahootian (1993), for example, uses a computationally-based formalism, the Tree Adjoining Grammar, to account for Farsi-English code-switching. Her analysis, essentially following Pandit's (1990) insight, is based on the assumption that in code-switching the language of the head determines the syntactic properties of its complement.

Myers-Scotton (1993) uses a combination of production mechanisms and aspects of grammatical theory to propose her Matrix Language Frame (MLF) Model of code-switching. The model is built on two central hierarchies: the matrix language (ML) vs. embedded language (EL) distinction and the content vs. system morpheme distinction.

l. The major innovation in the new version is that now there are four, not two, different types of morphemes (content morphemes vs. three types of [‘early,’ ‘bridge’ and ‘late’] system morphemes) available at different levels of grammatical organization and activated and combined by different mechanisms in production (for details see Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000).

use the ‘Minimalist’ (Chomsky 1995) technology to account for bilingual code-switching. These accounts presuppose familiarity with the most recent version of Chomskyan syntax and is not easy to summarize in the space available.

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

Assuming, especially in bilingual language use. ‘language’ to belong to the set of morphological features that needs to be checked off for licit derivation, it follows that code-switching will be disallowed only in those instances where there is a mismatch between a functional head and its complement in the language feature, which yields an illicit derivation.

cSwan (1999) carefully accounts for Nahuati-Spanish code-switching purely on Minimalist assumptions (Chomsky 1995). A Minimalist account, however, does not block the derivations of (1b) and (2b), since neither the structure-building operations (Merge, Move) nor any Checking (Case, EPP), Computational (Last Resort, Minimal Link Condition), or Economy (Full Interpretation, Procrastinate, Shortest Derivation Condition) principles are violated by the switched items in these examples. The data in (1b), for example, is both LF and PF convergent.

. This framework thus holds promise for a theory of code-switching by recruiting structural constraints proposed for different pairs of languages and allowing them all to interact to account for cross-linguistic generalization.

Bhatt (1997a, 2001) argues that the constraints offered in the past to express distributional generalizations of code-switching were categorical: their violations lead to illicit structures. Instead of using categorical constraints, a slight adjustment in the theory—from inviolable to ‘violable’ (soft) constraints—yields the relevant generalizations. These soft constraints are violable in just those contexts in which they conflict with a higher ranked constraint. The claim, then, is that a code-switched constituent that violates a particular constraint has its wellformedness ‘reduced’ by a certain amount (cf. also Singh 1985).

Thus, the ‘Head Syntax Constraint’—the grammatical properties of the language of the head are respected within its ‘minimal domain’—is a synthesis of Mahootian (1993), Pandit (1990), and Sridhar and Sridhar (1980).

Theory, universal, the effect of the presence or nonpresence of a constraint in code-switching is more a matter of its ranking relative to other constraints in a particular bilingual grammar. The cross-linguistic variation in code-switching arises from different constraint-ranking configurations opted for by different bilingual grammars. [Abbreviations: Infl—inflection: Spec specifier.]

lthough it is not possible here to present a detailed exposition of the optimality account of code-switching,

udies on structural constraints on code-switching have, over the years, attempted to systematize the linguistically significant generalizations of bilinguals' language use. Although these accounts have become increasingly theoretically sophisticated, insofar as they present optimism for speculations on the bilingual mind design, they are, unfortunately, based on the methodological premise that constraints are infallible.

Although most of the constraints proposed were able to capture the descriptive generalizations of code-switching for specific language pairs, they invariably failed to generalize, because of their structural design, beyond the data-sets for which they were proposed (see Bokamba 1989, Clyne 1987).

Some of the earliest attempts toward structuring code-switching resulted in descriptive generalizations, encoded as language-specific constraints.

code-switching is automatic, and the fact that fluent bilinguals have fairly consistent judgments on the well-formedness of code-switched sentences (cf. Singh 1985).

Relatively recently, however, attempts have been made to ground the syntactic constraints in formal linguistic theories to account for what Ferguson (1978) called the ‘bilingual's grammar.’

The research output in the 1980s in the area of structural constraints on code-switching has challenged the claim in the earlier sociolinguistic literature that code-switching is random (e.g., Labov 1971: 457, Lance 1975: 143), and instead put forward the view that code-switching is systematic and rule-governed.

This entry focuses on research that deals with the structural design of code-switching, the knowledge and ability underlying bilinguals' use of two languages within a sentence. This ability known variously as ‘code-mixing’ (see Code-mixing), or ‘intra-senlential code-switching’

One of the most pervasive phenomena of bilingual behavior is code-switching, the ability of bilinguals to switch back and forth between the languages they control,

The observed syntactic differences among languages involved in code-switching will then turn out to be different constraint-ranking configurations opted for by different bilingual grammars.

In contrast, the markedness model emphasizes that speakers use CS as a tool to present a certain persona; they exploit participants’ sense of the indexicality of each code (see indexicals) and of the contrast between the social import of codes in a given context (Myers-Scotton 1993 inter alia). Some analysts, such as B. Rampton, C. Stroud, and J. Gafaranga, emphasize CS as exemplifying the speaker’s creative agency.

his cross-linguistic observation affords the plausible assumption that the syntax of code-switched constructions strives toward well-formedness, i.e., when the guest (embedded) constituents are mixed into the host (matrix) language, the syntax operates to optimize well-formedness. In other words, when the guest items are introduced to the host language, certain adjustments follow, naturally, since items (words, phrases) from one language with one set of well-formedness conditions move to a language with another set of well-formedness conditions.

In the 1990s, the use of grammatical theory to account for code-switching became the received methodology.

This entry focuses on research that deals with the structural design of code-switching, the knowledge and ability underlying bilinguals' use of two languages within a sentence. This ability known variously as ‘code-mixing’ (see Code-mixing), or ‘intra-senlential code-switching’