A Minimalist Model and Computational Toolkit for Code Switching
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A Minimalist Model and Computational Toolkit for Code Switching Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Wong, Zechy Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 26/09/2021 07:36:49 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/636606 A MINIMALIST MODEL AND COMPUTATIONAL TOOLKIT FOR CODE SWITCHING by Zechy Wong Copyright © Zechy Wong 2019 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Seeing an undertaking like this one through to completion is a daunting task under the best of circumstances, and there are many, many people without whom this work would not have been possible. Thank you to my dissertation committee, Sandiway Fong, Heidi Harley and Mike Hammond, for generously giving of your time and expertise throughout the writing process. Thank you for continuing to believe in the value of this project whenever I started to doubt it myself, and for all our little chats not just about linguistics, but about life as well. This dissertation would not be half the work it is now without your insightful comments and the many fruitful discussions, both professional and personal, that we’ve had. Thank you also to the other faculty members, supervisors, and colleagues who helped pave the way in one way or another: To Noam Chomsky, for taking the time to discuss and provide crucial feedback on the project even while it was still in its infancy and hardly fleshed-out yet; to Simin Karimi, who served on my prelim committee and encouraged me not to forget my theoretical syntax roots; to Peter Jansen, who served on my prelim and oral comps committees, and who first helped me secure a research assist- antship outside the Linguistics department; to Mihai Surdeanu, Clayton Morrison, Gus Hahn-Powell (congratulations on the new appointment!), Marco Valenzuela-Escárcega, Dane Bell, Enrique Noriega-Atala, and the members of the CLU and ML4AI labs for treating me as one of their own; to Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Andy Wedel for taking me on as a TA; to 3 Amy Fountain for taking me on as a TA and an RA multiple times, and for providing the warmest welcome to the department a first-year could have hoped for; to Natasha Warner, Diana Archangeli, Adam Ussishkin, and Cecile McKee for providing support and practical guidance at various stages of the programme; to Marian Wiseley, Kimberley Young, Stephanie Amado, and Shayna Walker for keeping the business side of things running smoothly and accommodating the occasional odd administrative or logistical request. Thank you to my cohort mates and fellow grad students, past and present, for your friendship and moral support. To Bill, Colleen, Joe, Leah, Ryan, Shannon, Skye, and Stanley: Thank you for being such excellent cohort mates, and for those of you not done yet, hang in there, the end is in sight! To Ana, Daisy, and Louise: May life lead you ever onwards to bigger and better things. To Melodie and Rai: Our time together was brief, but I re- member you fondly every time I look down at the trackball mouse I’ve used every day for the last four years. Wishing nothing but the very best for you and yours; you will not be forgotten. To my fellow Singaporeans, Jianrong and Jian Gang: Thank you for being wonderful, chill housemates, and for always accommodating my last minute requests for Singlish judgements – Rooting for you guys from back home! To everyone at Tucson Chinese Baptist Church, thank you for allowing me into your hearts and your homes. From the youths, to the college group, to the young adults, to the adult English and Mandarin congregations: You have all shown me the value of community, and I will always remember your hospitality and fellowship. It was a pleasure serving alongside and walking through life with each and every one of you. To my family: Thank you for your unwavering support through this whole seemingly interminable process. To my dad, for showing me the value of intellectual curiosity, and to my mum, for showing me the importance of 4 family. To my brothers, with whom I can always share a funny story, an inside joke, or a quick game. To Shana: Thank you for your love and encouragement, especially during the final stages of the programme, and for pushing me to be a better person every day. And thank you for being the kick in the pants I needed to finally get this thing done. To my aunt, 姑姑: Thank you for being the financial guarantor that al- lowed me to get a student visa in the first place; but more importantly, thank you for modelling Christ’s love in your life, even up to the final moments be- fore your passing. I’m glad we got to speak one last time; we all miss you. And I thank God for guiding me to this department, and for all the people I’ve met along the way. This wasn’t initially my first choice of school, but from all I’ve seen, heard, and experienced over these last five and a half years, I can imagine no better fit than exactly where I ended up. May this work make some contribution, in its own little way, to His glory and the edification of all humankind. 5 For Shana, with love. Quaerite ergo primum regnum Dei, et justitiam ejus: et haec omnia adjicientur vobis. 6 CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 9 LIST OF ALGORITHMS 10 ABBREVIATIONS 10 ABSTRACT 12 INTRODUCTION 14 I A MINIMALIST THEORY OF CODE SWITCHING 1 CODE SWITCHING AND THE MINIMALIST PROGRAM 17 1.1 Code switching . 17 1.1.1 Definitions and terminology . 17 1.1.2 Previous accounts . 20 1.2 The Minimalist Program . 23 1.2.1 The derivational process: Merge, the Workspace, and Phases . 25 1.2.2 The semantic and external interfaces . 28 1.2.3 Lexical items, syntactic objects, and features . 31 1.3 English-Chinese code switching . 33 1.4 Summary and research questions . 37 2 CODE SWITCHING IN SINGAPORE 39 2.1 Why Singapore: Proficiency and prestige . 39 2.1.1 English and Mandarin in Singapore . 41 2.1.2 Code switching and Singapore English . 43 2.1.3 Mandarin vs. the other Chinese dialects . 47 2.2 Why corpus data: The SEAME corpus . 49 7 2.3 Summary . 51 3 THE SYNTAX OF CODE SWITCHING 53 3.1 Where is code switching allowed? . 53 3.2 Where is code switching not allowed? . 59 3.2.1 Redundant functional items . 59 3.2.2 The Elsewhere Principle . 62 3.2.3 Within single lexical items and idioms . 67 3.3 Calques revisited . 70 3.4 Word order effects . 74 3.4.1 Relative clauses . 75 3.4.2 Temporal adverbials . 81 3.5 Summary . 83 II COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING PLATFORM 4 THE CODE SWITCHING TOOLKIT 86 4.1 Introduction and rationale . 86 4.2 Architecture and interface . 89 4.3 Derivational engine components . 95 4.4 Default parameters . 99 4.5 Example derivation . 105 4.6 Summary . 111 III CONCLUSION AND APPENDICES 5 CONCLUSION 114 5.1 Future work . 117 A SEAME CORPUS ID KEY 120 REFERENCES 121 8 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Surface order of English phrases (head-initial) . 30 Figure 1.2 Surface order of Japanese phrases (head-final) . 30 Figure 1.3 Surface order of Chinese phrases (mixed) . 30 Figure 3.1 Structures for * me 的 (de) and 我的 (wǒ de) ‘my’ . 63 Figure 3.2 Structural positions of full DP possessors vs. pro- nominal possessors (adapted from Despić 2015).. 65 Figure 3.3 Analogous structures for relative clauses with Eng- lish and Mandarin relative markers . 77 Figure 4.1 Default UI layout for the CSTK . 90 Figure 4.2 Default admin interface for the CSTK . 91 Figure 4.3 CSTK HTTP API example . 92 Figure 4.4 CSTK client/server network diagram . 94 Figure 4.5 Derivational engine components . 100 Figure 4.6 Redundant internal Merges of direct children . 104 Figure 4.7 LexicalItems example . 106 Figure 4.8 Lexical array example . 107 Figure 4.9 Generated derivational paths . 109 Figure 4.10 CSTK visualisation for intended derivation . 109 Figure 4.11 CSTK visualisations for extra derivations . 110 Figure 4.12 CSTK visualisation for derivation with English items 112 9 LIST OF ALGORITHMS Algorithm 1 DerivationStep processing . 98 Algorithm 2 Default Rule: CoreNoUninterpretable ....... 102 Algorithm 3 Unification function . 102 Algorithm 4 Default Generator: ExternalMerge ......... 104 Algorithm 5 Default Generator: InternalMerge ......... 104 ABBREVIATIONS 1 First Person 3 Third Person ACC Accusative ASP Aspect ASS Assertive CL Classifier EMPH Emphatic FS False Start GEN Genitive 10 HESIT Hesitation MOD Modifier NEG Negation NPR Proper Noun PRO Pronoun PRT Particle PST Past Q Question REL Relative SG Singular TENT Tentative CI Conceptual-Intentional (Interface) SM Sensory-Motor (Interface) CSTK The Code Switching Toolkit SgE Singapore (Colloquial) English 11 ABSTRACT Researchers have long noted the fact that multilingual speakers often en- gage in code switching: That is, they use mixes of multiple languages within single utterances or discourses. Many previous accounts of the phenomenon have treated the separate languages involved as distinct from one another, and there have been a number of code switching-specific principles and rules proposed that aim to "constrain the interactions of the two [grammatical] systems in mixture" (MacSwan 2000).