Kay González-Vilbazo Laura Bartlett

Sarah Downey Shane Ebert

Jeanne Heil Bradley Hoot

Bryan Koronkiewicz Sergio Ramos

Methods in Code-switching Research

In/Between Conference

Thursday, March 1, 2012

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Introduction

Code-switching (CS) The simultaneous use of two languages within a

discourse by bilingual speakers Linguistic Theory

Aims to understand the properties of speakers’ competence to access fundamental principles of the human language faculty

Studies I-language (Chomsky 1986), which is reflected in every speaker’s competence

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Introduction

CS and Linguistic Theory Bilingual speakers have competence

They have clear intuitions about the acceptability of code-switched sentences (Toribio 2001)

CS falls within the range of possible human languages CS can give us access to combinations of linguistic

elements that we may not otherwise be able to observe in monolingual data (González-Vilbazo & López 2012)

How do we access this competence?

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Introduction

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Introduction

Goals Focus on methodological issues specific to CS

research Provide illustrative examples and/or potential

solutions to unique problems Not intended to take into account the breadth

of issues related to linguistic methodology Intended to foment discussion, start a

conversation, and build towards best practices

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Example: Sluicing

(1) John threatened someone, but I don’t know who <John threatened>.

Accounting for the deleted TP has been the subject of significant research

Two main theories: Semantic identity (Merchant 2001, van Craenenbroeck 2010)

Beyond semantics (Sag 1976, Chung 2006)

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Example: Sluicing

How can we bring empirical evidence to bear on this theoretical question? Morphosyntactic feature to investigate: Case Language pair: Spanish/German CS study (González-

Vilbazo & Ramos forthcoming)

Case is overtly marked on the wh-word remnant in both languages

The verb threaten assigns accusative in Spanish, but dative in German

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Monolingual Spanish and German

Example: Sluicing

(2) Juan amenazó a alguien, pero no sé a quién.

Juan threatened ACC someone but not know.1SING ACC who

‘Juan threatened someone, but I don’t know who.’

(3) Juan hat jemandem gedroht, aber ich weiß nicht wem.

Juan has someone.DAT threatened but I know not who.DAT

‘Juan threatened someone, but I don’t know who.’

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Example: Sluicing

Code-switching the sentences allows us to investigate if morphosyntax is in play

(4) Juan amenazó a alguien, aber ich weiß nicht wen.

Juan threatened ACC someone, but I know not who.ACC

‘Juan threatened someone, but I don’t know who.’

(5) * Juan amenazó a alguien, aber ich weiß nicht wem.

Juan threatened ACC someone, but I know not who.DAT

‘Juan threatened someone, but I don’t know who.’

Supports the “beyond semantics” account (Sag 1976, Chung 2006)

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Monolingual

Participant Selection

Maximum degree of overlap between bilinguals and their monolingual counterparts Need not be global At least with respect to relevant feature(s)

Bilingual

amenazarACC

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Participant Selection

How can we verify this? In addition to code-switched stimuli, test

monolingual items to assess LA (and/or LB features)

EXAMPLE: Spanish/German CS study (González-Vilbazo & Ramos forthcoming)

Monolingual Spanish dative vs. accusative assignment

EXAMPLE: Spanish/English CS study (Hoot in preparation)

Monolingual English that-trace effect differences

(6) Whoi do you believe ti saw Edgar?

(7) * Whoi do you believe that ti saw Edgar?

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Participant Selection

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

2.60

2.05

4.20

3.29

Mean scores of included vs. excluded participants

Participants with that-trace effect (included)Participants without that-trace effect (excluded)

Who did John say que compró el libro?

Who did John say that compró el libro?

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Stimuli Design

Naturalness of CS Grammaticality judgments are constrained by

performance issues, including real-world plausibility (Bader & Häussler 2010)

Lexical items EXAMPLE: Spanish/Taiwanese CS study

(González-Vilbazo, Bartlett, Ebert & Vergara in preparation)

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Stimuli Design

Code-switched Spanish and Taiwanese

(8) Mirta compró hia-e tue-chit riab bat-zang?

Mirta bought those which CL rice-dumpling

‘Which of those rice dumplings did Mirta buy?’

(9) Mirta compró hia-e tue-chit pun ttse?

Mirta bought those which CL book

‘Which of those books did Mirta buy?’

A bat-zang is a rice dumpling specific to Taiwanese culture To paraphrase our consultant: If you are talking about

books, why switch?

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Stimuli Design

Modality of Stimuli Presentation CS can be influenced by prosody, pauses, etc.

(MacSwan 1999, Toribio 2001)

Although sometimes written, CS is primarily a spoken phenomenon Aural stimuli

+ phonological control - harder to create/administer+ more natural

Written stimuli+ easier to create/administer - no phonological control+ common theoretical practice

EXAMPLE: Spanish/English CS study (Hoot in preparation)

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Stimuli Design

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Experimental Procedure

Potential confounds CS is often subject to stigma (Poplack 1980)

The results may be artificially depressed CS is influenced by situation

Participants should be comfortable producing or listening to mixed language (Grosjean 1998)

Bilingual language mode continuum (Grosjean 1985, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2001)

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Potential solutions Instructions in CS Priming Training

EXAMPLE: Spanish/English CS study (González-Vilbazo & Koronkiewicz submitted)

Experimental Procedure

Confounds

Stigma Comfort LevelMode

Continuum

Solution

s

Instructions in CS (+) + +

Priming +

Training + + +

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Experimental Procedure

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

1.66

3.53

1.67

4.18

Mean scores by training type

No CS-specific trainingCS-specific training

Ella fights all the time. Ese duende fights all the time.

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Outline

Introduction EXAMPLE: Sluicing Methodological Concerns

Participant Selection Stimuli Design Experimental Procedure

Conclusions and Outlook

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Conclusions and Outlook

Participant Selection Overlap between monolinguals and bilinguals with

respect to relevant feature(s) Stimuli Design

Choose relevant features and language pairs, naturalness of CS, modality of stimuli

Experimental Procedure Instructions in CS, priming tasks, and training to

help with possible stigmatization, situational influence and the mode continuum

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Conclusions and Outlook

One step forward Report on these issues clearly in the literature

Ultimate goal Have discipline-wide standards

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References

Bader, Markus, & Jana Häussler. 2010. Toward a model of grammaticality judgments. Journal of Linguistics 46. 273-330.

Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger.

Chung, Sandra. 2006. Sluicing and the lexicon: The point of no return. In Rebecca T. Cover & Yuni Kim (eds.) Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31. 73–91. Berkeley, California: Berkeley Linguistics Society.

van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen & Anikó Lipták. 2009. What sluicing can do, what it can’t and in which language: On the cross-linguistic syntax of ellipsis. Ms. HUB.

González-Vilbazo, Kay, Laura Bartlett, Shane Ebert & Daniel Vergara. In preparation. Wh constructions in Taiwanese-Spanish code-switching.

González-Vilbazo, Kay & Bryan Koronkiewicz. Submitted. Pronouns in Spanish-English code-switching.

González-Vilbazo, Kay & Luis López. 2012. Little v and parametric variation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 30(1). 33-77.

González-Vilbazo, Kay & Sergio E. Ramos. Forthcoming. A Morphosyntactic condition on sluicing: Evidence from Spanish/German code-switching.

Grosjean, Francois. 1985. The bilingual as a competent but specific speaker-hearer. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6. 467-477.

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References

Grosjean, Francois. 1994. Individual bilingualism. The encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 1656-1660. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Grosjean, Francois. 1997. Processing mixed language: Issues, findings, and models. In A. M. B. de Groot & J. F. Kroll (eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives. 225-254. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Grosjean, Francois. 2001. The bilingual’s language modes. In Janet L. Nicol (ed.) One Mind, Two Languages: Bilingual Language Processing. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hoot, Bradley. In preparation. Complementizers in Spanish/English code-switching.

MacSwan, Jeff. 1999. A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code Switching. New York: Garland Pub.

Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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.

Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deletion and logical form. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline. 2001. On the emergence of code-switching competence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4(3). 203-231.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and thank: Luis López, Lukasz Adamczyk, Christian Alvarado, Jesse

Banwart, Blanca Bustos, Enas El-Khatib, Liz Remitz, Marlen Romero, Ivette Serrano, Jack Waas, Kara Morgan-Short and the members of the Cognition of Second Language Acquisition Laboratory

This material is based upon work supported by: National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1146457 UIC Provost’s Award for Graduate Research

Thank you!