UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11 (1999)
Word order in German-English mixed discourse
EVA EPPLER
Intrasententially code-switched data pose an
interesting problem for syntactic research as two grammars interact in one
utterance. Constituent-based models have been shown to have difficulties
accounting for mixing between SVO and SOV languages like English and German. In
an analysis of code-switched and monolingual subordinate clauses, I show that
code-mixing patterns can be studied productively in terms of a dependency
analysis whi c h recognises words but not phrases.
That is, each word in a switched dependency satisfies the constraints imposed
on it by its own language. Quantitative methodologies, in addition to the
dependency analysis, are essential because some of the influences o f
code-switching are probabilistic rather than absolute.
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