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The Grammar of English-Afrikaans Code Switching

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The Grammar of English-Afrikaans Code Switching The grammar of English-Afrikaans code switching A feature checking account Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Janskerkhof 13 fax: +31 30 253 6406 3512 BL Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: Beads, by Ondene van Dulm ISBN 978-90-78328-30-8 NUR 616 Copyright © 2007: Ondene van Dulm. All rights reserved. The grammar of English-Afrikaans code switching A feature checking account een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Letteren Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op Woensdag 12 September 2007 om 15.30 uur precies door Ondene van Dulm geboren op 28 Oktober 1972 te Pretoria Promotores: Prof. dr. P.C. Muysken Prof. dr. R.W.N.M. van Hout Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. A. van Kemenade Dr. T. Dijkstra Prof. K. McCormick (Universiteit van Kaapstad) The research presented in this book was supported by the South African National Research Foundation under grant number GUN 2069846. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Research Foundation. For Enya and Mia CONTENTS Acknowledgments i List of tables iii List of figures v List of abbreviations vii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The present study 1 1.2 The setting 3 1.3 Bilingualism and code switching 5 1.4 Structure of the present work 8 2 THE STUDY OF CODE SWITCHING 9 2.1 Terminology 9 2.2 Sociolinguistic studies of code switching 12 2.3 Grammatical aspects of code switching 15 2.3.1 Basic distinctions 15 2.3.2 Structural constraints on code switching 17 2.3.3 “Minimalist” approaches to grammatical aspects of code switching 26 2.3.4 A typology of code switching 30 2.4 Code switching research in the South African context 31 2.4.1 Sociolinguistic studies of code switching 32 2.4.2 Mixed languages 36 2.4.3 Grammatical aspects of code switching 38 3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 41 3.1 Theoretical point of departure 41 3.1.1 Generative grammar 41 3.1.2 The minimalist program 44 3.1.3 Some assumptions and devices of minimalist syntax 47 3.2 The present study: A proposal for code switching 49 3.3 Structural differences between English and Afrikaans and predictions for code switching 52 3.3.1 Underlying assumptions 53 3.3.2 Verb movement in constructions with adverbs 54 3.3.3 Verb movement in focalisation structures 58 3.3.4 Verb movement in topicalisation structures 61 3.3.5 Verb movement in embedded that clauses 65 3.3.6 Verb movement in embedded wh clauses 68 3.3.7 Verb movement in yes-no questions 71 3.4 Summary of results 74 4 EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM 77 4.1 Naturalistic vs. experimental data 77 4.2 The test battery 81 4.2.1 The participants 81 4.2.2 Test format 81 4.2.3 The pre-test 82 4.2.4 Judgments of relative well-formedness: Visual stimuli 83 4.2.5 Judgments of relative well-formedness: Auditory stimuli 85 4.2.6 Sentence construction 86 4.2.7 Video clip description 89 4.2.8 Magnitude estimation 91 4.2.9 The post-test questionnaire 96 5 RESULTS OF JUDGMENTS AND SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION 99 5.1 Constructions with adverbs 100 5.2 Focalisation constructions 104 5.3 Topicalisation constructions 108 5.4 Embedded that clauses 113 5.5 Embedded wh clauses 118 5.6 yes-no questions 123 5.7 Summary of results 126 6 RESULTS OF VIDEO DESCRIPTION 129 6.1 Constructions with adverbs 131 6.2 Focalisation constructions 134 6.3 Topicalisation constructions 135 6.4 Embedded that clauses 136 6.5 Embedded wh clauses 138 6.6 yes-no questions 139 6.7 Summary of results 140 7 RESULTS OF MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION 143 7.1 Constructions with adverbs 147 7.2 Focalisation constructions 156 7.3 Topicalisation constructions 164 7.4 Embedded that clauses 172 7.5 Embedded wh clauses 180 7.6 yes-no questions 187 7.7 Summary of results 195 8 DISCUSSION 199 8.1 Evaluating the paradigm 200 8.1.1 Results across the tests 200 8.1.2 The relative merit of each of the tests 202 8.1.3 Factors influencing test performance 203 8.1.4 The web-based test format 204 8.2 The main hypothesis 204 8.2.1 Constructions with adverbs 205 8.2.2 Focalisation constructions 206 8.2.3 Topicalisation constructions 207 8.2.4 Embedded that clauses 208 8.2.5 Embedded wh clauses 211 8.2.6 yes-no questions 212 8.2.7 An overall evaluation 213 8.3 Further findings 215 8.3.1 Adjacency effects 216 8.3.2 Effects of length and nature of elements 216 8.3.3 Borrowing 218 8.4 Concluding remarks 219 REFERENCES 221 Appendix A: The questions in the pre-test (English version) 233 Appendix B: Instructions for the judgments of the relative well-formedness of visually presented sentences 237 Appendix C: Items for the judgments of the relative well- formedness of visually presented sentences 238 Appendix D: Instructions for the judgments of the relative well- formedness of auditorily presented utterances 241 Appendix E: Items for the judgments of the relative well- formedness of auditorily presented utterances 242 Appendix F: Instructions for the sentence construction task 245 Appendix G: Items for the sentence construction test 246 Appendix H: Introductory texts and target structures for the video clip description test 248 Appendix I: Instructions for the magnitude estimation of the relative well-formedness of sentence sets 255 Appendix J: Questions in the post-test questionnaire (English version) 257 Appendix K: Post-test of loanword status of English verbs (English version) 259 Appendix L: Alternative constructions in the sentence construction test 260 Samenvatting (Nederlands) 263 Opsomming (Afrikaans) 267 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe my sincere gratitude to many people for help of various kinds with this project. To begin with my colleagues at the Department of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University, I thank Johan Oosthuizen for sharing his valuable insights into the syntactic aspects of the work, and Kate van Gass for her help with all matters electronic. My thanks also to Simone Conradie for her support and helpful comments, and to Christine Smit for her assistance with administration. I also thank Rudie Botha for insightful comments on my early point of departure, which paved the way for a successful initial proposal. I am very grateful for the personal encouragement and academic insights of my good friend and colleague, Frenette Southwood, whose support has been invaluable. My most heartfelt thanks go to my departmental chair, Christine Anthonissen, for her unfailing support and sound advice from day one of the project, for opening up funding opportunities, for providing study leave to complete the dissertation, and most importantly for offering a calm port in a great number and variety of academic and other storms. I also thank the departmental assistants who have migrated in and out of the department over the past few years, whose friendly attitude and willingness to carry out all manner of tasks in the shortest possible time and with the highest possible levels of enthusiasm are greatly appreciated. Thanks to Alexa Anthonie, Taryn Bernard, Morné Botha, Nicki Cumming, Ignatius Nothnagel, Rikus Oswald, Lauren Mongie, Suzanne Rose, Bani van der Merwe, Kristin van der Merwe, and Stephanie Zietsman. Remaining at Stellenbosch University, I thank the WebCT team, especially JP Bosman, Alida Louw and Morris Samuels, for their invaluable help with setting up my tests on the WebCT system, and their readiness at the end of the helpline when I felt myself in dire straits during the transition from WebCT CE to WebCT Vista and the power cuts early in 2006. Outside of Stellenbosch, I thank Kay McCormick of the University of Cape Town for insightful comments on the work, and Yosef Grodzinsky of McGill University for advice on participant selection and instruction. i Many thanks also to Theresa Biberauer of Cambridge University for sharing her expertise in finalising the syntactic analyses. Regarding funding, my thanks go to the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) for generous grants in 2005-7, and to both the Dean of my faculty, Hennie Kotzé, and to Stellenbosch University’s Sub-committee A, for their contribution to the NRF grants. I am also indebted to the people on and off campus who assisted in my funding applications and the later administration of the funds: Petra Engelbrecht, Maryke Hunter-Husselmann, Fran Ritchie, Erna Pheiffer, Riaan Basson, Johan Mostert, and Faizel Rhode. Turning to the Netherlands, my thanks to Marianne Gullberg at the Max Planck Institute Nijmegen, Ton Dijkstra at the Nijmegen Institute of Cognitive Investigation, and Ineke van de Craats at the Department of Linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen, who all gave me valuable advice on data elicitation techniques. Also thanks to Hans den Besten of the University of Amsterdam, who took the time to consider my syntactic analyses. My sincere thanks go to Roeland van Hout at the Department of Linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen, for the statistical analysis of my data, and for his patience in ensuring that I understood the outcomes. Thanks too to Annika van der Made for her help with the practical arrangements for the defence. I also thank most sincerely Pieter Muysken, for his enthusiastic support and guidance from the time of my initial proposal.
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