BILINGUAL CODE-MIXING

1. BILINGUAL CODE-MIXING Kevser Yağlı Hülya Arbaş Merve Çizgen Pınar Akçay

2. BILINGUAL CODE-MIXING • What is Code-Mixing? • Interutterance and Intrautterance Code-mixing • Adult Code-Mixing • Child Code-Mixing • Unitary Language-System Hypothesis

3. What is code-mixing? • Code-mixing is the use of elements from two languages in the same utterance or in the same stretch of conversation. e.g “Ama konuyu bu contextte ele almak zorundayız.”

4. Intrautterance code-mixing: When the elements from two languages occur in the same utterance. e.g “Alguien se murio en ese cuarto that he sleeps in.” (Someone died in that room..) Types of Code-mixing (Zentella, 1999, p. 119)

5. Interutterance Code-Mixing • When the elements from two languages occur in two different utterances in the same conversation. e.g “Pa, me vas a comprar un jugo? It cos’ 25 cents.” (Are you going to buy me orange juice?) (Zentella, 1999, p. 118)

6. The mixed elements can be whole words, phrases, clauses, or pragmatic patterns • Mixing can involve small units of language (sounds, morphemes, words) as well as larger chunks (phrases, whole clauses).

7. “Estamos como marido y woman” (we are like man and..) • “I’m going with her a la esquina” (...to the corner) • “You know how to swim but no te tapa.” (...it won’t be over your head) • “Donne moi le cheval; le cheval; the horse!” (Give me the horse, the horse,..) Mixing at the phrase level: • Putzen Zaehne con jabon (brushing teeth with soap) (Genesee & Meisel, 1989)

8. Semantic mixing: - You want to open the lights? - Televizyon-a bak-ıca-m (Turkish-German) (In TK: bak ‘look’ is not used to express ‘watching TV’) (Genesee &Meisel, 1989)

9. Do all bilinguals code-mix in the same amount? • Genesee et. al’s 1995 research • They worked with children who are learning French and English from their parents at home. • They have found that children mixed within utterances less than 10% of the time, but there are very large individual differences.

10. Some of the children mixed as little as 2% of the time, while the others mixed much more frequently. • WHY? (Genesee et.al, 1995)

11. ADULT CODE-MIXING • Understanding how, when and why adults code-mix can help us better understand child BCM • Because the patterns we see in adults give an indication of the developmentally typical end point of child code-mixing.

12. Like bilingual children, bilingual adults mix languages both within utterances and across utterances.

13. However, they are more likely to code-mix in informal settings than in public settings. (Zentella, 1995) WHAT DOES IT IMPLY?

14. It implies that mixing is a casual and improper way during speech. What do you think?

15. Researchers say that; • When adults mix languages from one utterance to another, each utterance is grammatically well-formed according to the rules of the related language.

16. However, when they mix within the utterances, the grammars of two languages are mixed, and the utterance might be probably incorrect.

17. Researchers agree that in most cases, each language segment of a mixed utterance is well-formed according to the rules of tis respective language. When it is not, it is probably due to performance errors. Look at the previous examples.

18. e.g “ I’m going with her a la esquire” (...to the corner) • This shift is correct according to both English and Spanish word order.

19. What about • “ Yo have been able to ensenar Maria leer (I teach...Maria to read) ensenar= to teach Double infinitivals!

20. Reasons for Code-mixing 1. The type of code-mixing depends on the level of proficiency of the bilingual adults. • Bilingual adults proficient in both languages code-switch from one language to the other flawlessly. • Learners in the process of developing proficiency lack the linguistic competence to code-mix flawlwessly and fluently.

21. “ Yo have been able to ensenar Maria leer (I teach...Maria to read) ensenar= to teach Double infinitivals!

22. 2. Filling lexical gaps in their languages is another reason for code-mixing.

23. Any difference between code-mixing of fluent BLs vs SLLs? • Second language learners tend to show that they are going to switch, and they may make a mistake. • They “FLAG” their mixing.

24. Flagging • It is a pragmatic strategy second language learners can use to isolate the mixed elements because they may not know how to integrate them grammatically. • It signals that the SL learner is about to mix and may make a mistake.

25. e.g “Hier, je suis alle au hardware store- how do you say hardware store in French?” (Yesterday I went to the ...)

26. Other reasons for code-mixing in bilingual adults • To express that they are bilingual • As a show of intimacy of ethnic closeness to people who share the same culture • To narrate specific episodes that they experienced in bilingual environment. • To show respect for others who are more proficient in one or the other language. • To show that they are different form monolingual people around them.

27. Conclusions • BCM is a common feature of language use among bilingual adults. • There are social, cultural, and linguistic purposes for code-mixing. • So, adult BCM is not random; it is purposeful at certain times.

28. WHY DO BILINGUALCHILDREN CODE-MIX? • BCM is a cause for concern because many people, educationalists, and specialists believe that BCM indicates that the child is not developing typically or s/he is confused and can not seperate the two languages. (Leopold, 1949)

29. According to this view, the child is actually like a monolingual child, not having seperated the two different language systems. • This view has been discussed and the focus is children between 2-4 years of age.

30. Unitary Language System Hypothesis • As an answer to child BCM: “young bilingual children mix words and other elements form their two languages in the same utterance because their languages are not differentiated in the early stages of development.”

31. In order to test this hypothesis, we need to see how BC use language with others to see if they use their languages without regard to the language of their partners.

32. Suggests that “Differentiation takes place later, around 3 years of age.” • Views the BC’s code-mixing as a symptom of confusion and incompetence.

33. Genesee et. al’s 1995 study • They observed English-French bilingual children form Montreal during nauralistic interactions with their parents at home. • The parents were speaking different native languages (one-parent-one-language rule) • BC were observed in three cases: with fathers alone, with mothers alone, and with both parents.

34. Aim: to see the children’s ability to keep their languages seperate in different language contexts. • Result: they used more French with their French-speaking parent than they did with the English-speaking parent. – when they were both present, the children used the appropriate language more for each parent

35. Critiques of this study: most of the children tended to use one language more than the other with both parents, and this was their more proficient language in each case. • So, knowing that their parents knew both languages, the children made use of all their linguistic resources

36. Genesee et. al’s 1996 study • Aim: to examine the limits of bilingual children’s ability to use their developing languages appropriately • They observed a number of French-English BC during play sessions with monolingual peers. • The BC didn’t know the preferred language of their monolingual peers.

37. In three of the four children, the language spoken by their peers was the less proficient language of the BC. • Three of the four children used more of the stranger’s language than they did with their parents. • They also used less of the language that was not known by the stranger.

38. One of the children did not accommodote his language at all.

39. In conclusion, despite the fact that these three children had had no prior experience with this adult and they were compelled to use their less proficient language, they not only used the appropriate language but they also used it more frequently with the monolingual stranger than with the bilingual parent. • This finding also refutes the confusion hypothesis.

40. Child BCM does not reflect any confusion or a unitary system of language in the initial stages. • Researchers now agree that Unitary Language System Hypothesis is not valid and bilingual children can differentiate their languages according to the speaker.

41. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis • Another alternative solution; • BCM serves to fill gaps in the developing child’s linguistic competence.

42. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis The simplest mixing occurs at lexical level. • According to the Lexical Gap Hypothesis, bilingual children mix words from language X when using language Y becuse they do not know the appropriate word in language Y.

43. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis Mixing syntactic patterns might also occur in order to fill syntactic gaps in the child’s knowledge of the target language.

44. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis There is considerable evidence for this explanation; First; as it is generally observed, young bilingual children mix more when they use their less proficient language.

45. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis Second; there is direct evidence that bilingual children are much more likely to mix words for which they do not know the translation equivalent in the target language.

46. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis The study by Genesee, Paradis, & Wolf (1995) serves for the second type of evidence. They requested to keep diaries from the parents of the two young bilingual children.

47. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis The results; The explanation was valid for both of the children. For the one boy, 100 % of the words he code-mixed with his father were words the boy did not know in his father’s language.

48. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis Another alternative solution; BCM serves to fill the gaps in the developing child’s linguistic competence.

49. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis For the other boy, as well, the majority words that he code-mixed were words for which he did not know the translation equivalent, in other words he did not have the translation equivalents for 65% of the words he code-mixed.

50. 2. Gap Filling Hypothesis In some cases of lexical mixing, it might not be a matter of the child not knowing the appropriate word, but might not exist in the target language. French word  “dodo”