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Code‐switching and universal constraints: evidence from Farsi/English
Author(s) -
MAHOOTIAN SHAHRZAD
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1996.tb00124.x
Subject(s) - code switching , linguistics , focus (optics) , computer science , noun phrase , word (group theory) , phrase , noun , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , optics
Structural constraints on codeswitching have been the focus of much research and debate. While some researchers claim to have discovered universal constraints on codeswitching (Belazi et al. , 1994; Di Sciullo el al. , 1986; Joshi, 1985; Myers‐Scotton, 1993; Sankoff and Poplack, 1981), others deny the possibility of constraints motivated solely by syntactic considerations (Bokamba, 1989; Clyne, 1987). In a significant departure from both of these schools of thought, this paper presents a syntactic account of codeswitching which relies only on general principles of phrase structure and rejects constraints specific to codeswitching. This model is shown to account for intrasentential switches between typologically different languages such as Farsi and English, including within word switches and switches between modifiers and nouns.