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INVITED RESPONSE TO DAVIES AND BENTAHILA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2007

Carol Myers-Scotton
Affiliation:
Linguistics, Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, Michigan State University, myerssc3@msu.edu

Extract

I thank D & B for their stimulating review that concentrates on the MLF model and code-switching (CS), even though Contact linguistics (CL) discusses other contact phenomena, too. This is a model of “classic code-switching,” which is defined several times in CL (8, 105, 297). This scope was always intended, but not explicit in Duelling languages (Myers-Scotton 1993a). The nub of the definition is that only one of the languages contributing surface morphemes to a bilingual CP (i.e. clause) is the source of that clause's morphosyntactic frame. The Morpheme Order and System Morpheme Principles of the MLF model identify this language as the Matrix Language (ML). Classic CS contrasts with composite code-switching. The difference is that in Composite CS, part of the abstract morphosyntactic structure comes from more than one of the participating languages. Composite CS may be more prevalent than classic CS, but has yet to be studied systematically (CL, 298).

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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References

REFERENCES

Bentahila, Abdelali, & Davies, Eirlys (1992). Code-switching and language dominance. In Richard J. Harris (ed.), Cognitive processing in bilinguals, 44347. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Myers-Scotton, Carol M. (1993a). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol M. (1993b). Social motivations for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol M. (1993c). Common and uncommon ground: social and structural factors in codeswitching. Language in Society 22:475503.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol M. (1997). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. 2nd ed. with a new Afterword. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol M. (2002). Frequency and intentionality in (un)marked choices in codeswitching: “This is a twenty-four hour country”. International Journal of Bilingualism 6:20519.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana; Wheeler, S.; andWestwood, A. (1987). Distinguishing language contact phenomena: Evidence from Finnish-English bilingualism. In P. Lilius & M. Saari (eds.), Proceedings of the international conference of Nordic and general linguistics 33:3356. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.