Carol Myers‐scotton
Biographic Data
| ID | 116643 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carol Myers‐scotton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carol |
| FAMILY NAME | Myers‐scotton |
| SIGNATURE | SCOTTON C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Carolina |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 233 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Revisiting the 4-M model
Purpose: This paper offers an overview of the 4-M model from its inception, but pays special attention to how the characterization of morpheme types in the model has evolved. A new proposal is that the level at which morpheme types are “elected” in an abstract model of language production is a critical factor in predicting morpheme distribution across languages in bilingual data. Methodology: A new addition to the model, the Variable Election Hyp…
The Handbook of Language Contact edited by R aymond Hickey
Code-switching
Language Contact
The premise of this paper is that morpheme types differ in related ways in their participation in various types of language contact. The paper focuses on codeswitching, suggesting that the morpheme type that comes from only one of the participating languages in codeswitching also resists transfer or replication across languages in other contact phenomena. This morpheme is called the "outsider" system morpheme under the 4-M model. The paper sugges…
Invited Response to Davies and Bentahila
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 surfac…
Michael Clyne , Dynamics of language contact
Michael Clyne , Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003 Pp. xv, 282. Hb $65.00, pb $24.00. Ever since Thomason & Kaufman 1988 reawakened linguists to the role of external contacts in language change, and the origin and development of creoles became a major research topic (largely after Bickerton 1981), the field of contact linguistics has burgeoned. Sociolinguists have always bee…
Embedded Language elements in Acholi/English codeswitching
This article describes the main types of Embedded Language material that can appear within a bilingual clause. Specifically, Embedded Language elements in an Acholi/English codeswitching corpus are analysed. Three overall arguments are supported. First, when speakers employ Embedded Language material, the major motivation is that such material better expresses the semantics and pragmatics of the speaker's intentions than approximate Matrix Langua…
Codes and Consequences
Contact Linguistics
Frequency and intentionality in (un)marked choices in codeswitching
This paper has three, related goals. Its main goal is to provide quantitative evidence supporting the claim that in bilingual conversation the unmarked choice can be identified via a frequency-based criterion(cf. Myers-Scotton,1993b). Accordingly, frequency also identifies the marked choice. Second, it shows that not all participants in the same conversation necessarily have the same unmarked choice. Data come from a Malawian family temporarily l…
Implications of abstract grammatical structure
Preview this article: Implications of abstract grammatical structure: Two targets in creole formation, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/jpcl.16.2.02mye-1.gif
Calculating speakers
Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well developed, satisfactory theoretical links between data and explanation - especially links that include causal mechanisms - remain lacking. This article argues, somewhat paradoxically, that even though most choices reflect some societal pattern, speakers make linguistic choices as individuals. That is, choices ultimately lie with the individual and are rati…
Testing the 4-M model
Keywords child bilingualism codeswitching, composite Matrix Language, convergence creole structuring, morpheme classification
Why Bilingualism Matters
Four types of morpheme
This paper presents empirical evidence supporting a new model of morpheme classification called the 4-M model. This model emphasizes the notion that lemmas underlying different types of morphemes become salient at different levels of production. This explains their different distributions. While the 4-M model classifies morphemes, it is primarily a model of how morphemes are accessed. The argument is that particular instantiations of morphemes ar…
Explaining the role of norms and rationality in codeswitching
Korle Meets the Sea
Ghana has played a key role in African/Western relations since medieval times. For this reason and others, Ghana has evolved into a linguistic quilt that contains forty-four indigenous languages and several exotic ones, of which most Ghanaians speak at least two. Using Accra, Ghana's capital, as a microcosm, Dakubu conducts a linguistic, historical, and ethnographic investigation of the origins and durability of this multilingualism and how it ha…
Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching
Mixed Language,' a characteristic pattern of language use among African township residents in South Africa, may well include words or full constituents from several languages. However, from both a structural and a social perspective, such speech has a systematic nature. In reference to grammatical structure, within any CP (projection of COMP) showing codeswitching, only one language (the Matrix Language) provides the grammatical frame in the data…
Codeswitching and Compromise Strategies
This paper deals with two compromise strategies: 1) “Embedded Language Islands” and 2) “bare forms” in codeswitching (CS) within the CP (projection of Complementizer). These elements are discussed within the framework of the Matrix Language Frame Model (MLF model), a model explicated in Myers-Scotton (1993) and extended in Myers-Scotton and Jake (1995). While both EL Islands and bare forms are compromise strategies in CS, both are permissible opt…
The structure of Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho
This paper examines the structure of two varieties, Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho, that are spoken predominantly by males who live in the Black urban townships of South Africa. While many think that Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho lack predictable structure, this paper argues that all versions follow the same type of morphosyntactic constraints that structure code switching as well as playing a part in other language-contact phenomena. Data come largely from c…
Afterword
This afterword provides a discussion of each of the four papers, as they were presented at the 1995 Symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. It does so in terms of the premises of the Matrix Language Frame Model, especially the matrix language vs. embedded language distinction and the content vs. system morpheme distinction
Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings
Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model
Article Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model: evidence from intrasentential code switching was published on January 1, 1995 in the journal Linguistics (volume 33, issue 5)
Einar Haugen
The field of sociolinguistics has lost a major wellspring of insights. Einar Ingvald Haugen, 88, died on June 20, 1994, after a short illness. While Haugen's major publications on language contact phenomena and language planning came many years ago, the observations and postulations they contain have remained fresh. Analyzing new data sets, researchers of today who attempt to characterize bilingual speech often find that Haugen had their ideas fi…
Mice Are Men, Language and Society among the Murle of Sudan
Social Motivations For Codeswitching
This is the first book-length treatment of the social motivations for codeswitching, that is, the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation. Using data from multilingual African contexts (mostly from conversations studied in Kenya), Carol Myers-Scotton advances a theoretical argument which aims at a general explanation of these motivations. She treats codeswitching as a type of skilled performance, not as the 'alternative s…
Common and uncommon ground
The social forces affecting theperformanceof codeswitching (CS) may be distinguished from those factors controlling its basic structure, with which they interact. The constraints onpossiblepatterns in CS are largely under innately based controls. These constraints are presented here in a model of intrasentential CS, and their validity is tested against findings of CS practices in a number of communities; all options can be accounted for under the…
Calculating speakers
Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well developed, satisfactory theoretical links between data and explanation - especially links that include causal mechanisms - remain lacking. This article argues, somewhat paradoxically, that even though most choices reflect some societal pattern, speakers make linguistic choices as individuals. That is, choices ultimately lie with the individual and are rati…
Duelling Languages
The goal of this book is to describe and explain intrasentential codeswitching - the production of two or more languages within the same sentence. Most linquists who do not study codeswitching think of it as belonging strictly in the domain of sociolinguistics. Most codeswitching studies do indeed have a social aspect, because they typically use naturally occurring performance data as their base. However, this book is just as much a study in gram…
Explaining the role of norms and rationality in codeswitching
Elite closure as a powerful language strategy
L'article analyse la facon dont l'elite au pouvoir dans certains pays d'Afrique maintient ses privileges et sa domination sociale par les choix linguistiques qu'elle accomplit. L'elite est constituee par ceux qui parlent la langue officielle (Anglais, Francais, Portugais) et qui ont atteint un certain niveau d'etudes. La maniere dont l'elite passe de la langue indigene a la langue officielle dans les conversations (ex : Swahili/Anglais) est une m…
Codes and Consequences
Comparing codeswitching and borrowing
An issue regarding codeswitching discourse is the extent to which material from a donor language (the Embedded Language or EL) appearing in a recipient language (the Matrix Language or ML) shows internal differentiation. Three questions are relevant: (1) Are all singly‐occurring EL lexemes in such discourse borrowed forms, or are some codeswitched forms (CS forms)? (2) If some are CS forms, how are they differentiated from borrowings? (3) What is…
Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching
Mixed Language,' a characteristic pattern of language use among African township residents in South Africa, may well include words or full constituents from several languages. However, from both a structural and a social perspective, such speech has a systematic nature. In reference to grammatical structure, within any CP (projection of COMP) showing codeswitching, only one language (the Matrix Language) provides the grammatical frame in the data…
Four types of morpheme
This paper presents empirical evidence supporting a new model of morpheme classification called the 4-M model. This model emphasizes the notion that lemmas underlying different types of morphemes become salient at different levels of production. This explains their different distributions. While the 4-M model classifies morphemes, it is primarily a model of how morphemes are accessed. The argument is that particular instantiations of morphemes ar…
Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model
Article Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model: evidence from intrasentential code switching was published on January 1, 1995 in the journal Linguistics (volume 33, issue 5)
Language Contact
The premise of this paper is that morpheme types differ in related ways in their participation in various types of language contact. The paper focuses on codeswitching, suggesting that the morpheme type that comes from only one of the participating languages in codeswitching also resists transfer or replication across languages in other contact phenomena. This morpheme is called the "outsider" system morpheme under the 4-M model. The paper sugges…
Constructing the frame in intrasentential codeswitching
Codeswitching with English
Types of codeswitching are defined, according to their social functions, with switching 'as an unmarked choice' receiving special attention. This type of switching occurs when bilingual peers make relevant their dual and simultaneous membership in the two groups symbolized by the two different linguistic varieties involved in the switching pattern. Structural constraints on switching are discussed across codeswitching types. Finally, it is argued…
The structure of Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho
This paper examines the structure of two varieties, Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho, that are spoken predominantly by males who live in the Black urban townships of South Africa. While many think that Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho lack predictable structure, this paper argues that all versions follow the same type of morphosyntactic constraints that structure code switching as well as playing a part in other language-contact phenomena. Data come largely from c…
Einar Haugen
The field of sociolinguistics has lost a major wellspring of insights. Einar Ingvald Haugen, 88, died on June 20, 1994, after a short illness. While Haugen's major publications on language contact phenomena and language planning came many years ago, the observations and postulations they contain have remained fresh. Analyzing new data sets, researchers of today who attempt to characterize bilingual speech often find that Haugen had their ideas fi…
Mice Are Men, Language and Society among the Murle of Sudan
Styles of Discourse
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Codeswitching with English
Types of codeswitching are defined, according to their social functions, with switching 'as an unmarked choice' receiving special attention. This type of switching occurs when bilingual peers make relevant their dual and simultaneous membership in the two groups symbolized by the two different linguistic varieties involved in the switching pattern. Structural constraints on switching are discussed across codeswitching types. Finally, it is argued…
Suzanne Romaine, Bilingualism. Oxford
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Constructing the frame in intrasentential codeswitching
Comparing codeswitching and borrowing
An issue regarding codeswitching discourse is the extent to which material from a donor language (the Embedded Language or EL) appearing in a recipient language (the Matrix Language or ML) shows internal differentiation. Three questions are relevant: (1) Are all singly‐occurring EL lexemes in such discourse borrowed forms, or are some codeswitched forms (CS forms)? (2) If some are CS forms, how are they differentiated from borrowings? (3) What is…
Handbook of Language and Social Psychology
This important handbook, with chapters written by leading experts in their fields, is concerned with the integration of verbal and nonverbal features in communication. Not just a collection of readings, it examines how verbal and nonverbal systems in communication work. Contributions combine solid reviews of the current research and findings as well as important theoretical and practical problems, with suggestions for future directions of researc…
Linguistic Anthropology
Motivations for the Markedness Model
This chapter presents a number of themes which motivate the markedness model and which are current in research areas concerned with language in use. This model is an explanation accounting for speakers’ socio-psychological motivations when they engage in CS. It incorporates themes from a variety of disciplines, from the sociology of language (the ‘allocation paradigm’) to pragmatics (implicatures and intentional meaning) to social anthropology (t…
The African Setting
THE main data sources of this volume are two African nations where English is the main official language, with one or more indigenous languages also sharing official status. In Kenya, Swahili is a co-ordinate official language, and in Zimbabwe, Shona and Ndebele also have official status. In both cases, English has more of the roles in domains of socio-economic consequence. For example, English is the medium of instruction of education at all lev…
Conclusion
The goal of this volume has been to provide a general theoretical treatment of the socio-psychological motivations for codeswitching (CS) as a language-contact phenomenon. The arguments have been illustrated with many naturally occurring examples from African contexts; the volume is also, therefore, a description of the types of CS which involve African languages. As such, the result is, I hope, not only an explanation of the motivations of CS, b…
A Markedness Model of Codeswitching
The previous chapter discussed the theory to account for code choices in general and its antecedents. Here the markedness model in relation to CS is presented. The model consists of a set of general maxims applying to any code choice. This chapter discusses their application to CS, and provides examples illustrating their realization.
The Rise of Codeswitching as a Research Topic
This chapter provides an overview of how study of the socio-psychological motivations for CS evolved to become a major research topic. This development can be attributed to a number of factors, but the stimulation offered by the work of John Gumperz on CS was crucial. Gumperz’s own work is discussed in some detail and that of others who have followed him in the attempt to interpret or explain CS is surveyed.
Duelling Languages
The goal of this book is to describe and explain intrasentential codeswitching - the production of two or more languages within the same sentence. Most linquists who do not study codeswitching think of it as belonging strictly in the domain of sociolinguistics. Most codeswitching studies do indeed have a social aspect, because they typically use naturally occurring performance data as their base. However, this book is just as much a study in gram…
Social Motivations For Codeswitching
This is the first book-length treatment of the social motivations for codeswitching, that is, the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation. Using data from multilingual African contexts (mostly from conversations studied in Kenya), Carol Myers-Scotton advances a theoretical argument which aims at a general explanation of these motivations. She treats codeswitching as a type of skilled performance, not as the 'alternative s…
Elite closure as a powerful language strategy
L'article analyse la facon dont l'elite au pouvoir dans certains pays d'Afrique maintient ses privileges et sa domination sociale par les choix linguistiques qu'elle accomplit. L'elite est constituee par ceux qui parlent la langue officielle (Anglais, Francais, Portugais) et qui ont atteint un certain niveau d'etudes. La maniere dont l'elite passe de la langue indigene a la langue officielle dans les conversations (ex : Swahili/Anglais) est une m…
Common and uncommon ground
The social forces affecting theperformanceof codeswitching (CS) may be distinguished from those factors controlling its basic structure, with which they interact. The constraints onpossiblepatterns in CS are largely under innately based controls. These constraints are presented here in a model of intrasentential CS, and their validity is tested against findings of CS practices in a number of communities; all options can be accounted for under the…
Florian Coulmas, Language and economy. Oxford
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings
Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model
Article Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model: evidence from intrasentential code switching was published on January 1, 1995 in the journal Linguistics (volume 33, issue 5)
Einar Haugen
The field of sociolinguistics has lost a major wellspring of insights. Einar Ingvald Haugen, 88, died on June 20, 1994, after a short illness. While Haugen's major publications on language contact phenomena and language planning came many years ago, the observations and postulations they contain have remained fresh. Analyzing new data sets, researchers of today who attempt to characterize bilingual speech often find that Haugen had their ideas fi…
Mice Are Men, Language and Society among the Murle of Sudan
Afterword
This afterword provides a discussion of each of the four papers, as they were presented at the 1995 Symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. It does so in terms of the premises of the Matrix Language Frame Model, especially the matrix language vs. embedded language distinction and the content vs. system morpheme distinction
Codeswitching and Compromise Strategies
This paper deals with two compromise strategies: 1) “Embedded Language Islands” and 2) “bare forms” in codeswitching (CS) within the CP (projection of Complementizer). These elements are discussed within the framework of the Matrix Language Frame Model (MLF model), a model explicated in Myers-Scotton (1993) and extended in Myers-Scotton and Jake (1995). While both EL Islands and bare forms are compromise strategies in CS, both are permissible opt…
Linguistics (37 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (29 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (17 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (15 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity (8 works)