Bilingual verbs in three Spanish/English code-switching communities

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20507195
AutoresOsmer Balam (0000-0002-4507-7779, Department of Spanish, The College of Wooster, USA), Marie-Paule Couto (0000-0001-7306-3393, Leiden University), Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Netherlands), Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez (0000-0001-6779-072X, University of Southern Mississippi)
Año2020
Volumen24
Número5-6
Páginas952-967
Fecha de publicación2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Bilingualism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1367-0069 • E-ISSN: 1756-6878
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1367006920911449
OpenAlexW3012184799
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas24

Objectives/research questions: We investigate two understudied bilingual compound verbs that have been attested in Spanish/English code-switching; namely, ‘ hacer + V Inf ’ and ‘ estar + V Prog ’. Specifically, we examined speakers’ intuitions vis-à-vis the acceptability and preferential use of non-canonical and canonical hacer ‘to do’ or estar ‘to be’ bilingual constructions among bilinguals from Northern Belize, New Mexico and Puerto Rico. Methodology: Speakers from Northern Belize ( n = 44), New Mexico ( n = 32) and Puerto Rico ( n = 30) completed a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability task and a language background questionnaire. Data and analysis: The data were examined using an analysis of variance and Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment. Conclusions: Whereas Northern Belizean bilinguals gave the highest ratings to ‘ hacer + V Inf ’, both groups of US bilinguals gave preferential ratings to ‘ estar + V Prog ’ bilingual constructions. On the other hand, Puerto Rican bilinguals gave the highest preferential ratings to the canonical estar bilingual compound verbs (i.e. estar + an English progressive verb) but rejected hacer bilingual compound verbs. While ‘ hacer + V Inf ’ and ‘ estar + V Prog ’ may represent variants that are available to Spanish/English bilinguals, the present findings suggest a community-specific distribution, in which hacer bilingual compound verbs are consistently preferred over estar bilingual compound verbs in Northern Belize, whereas estar bilingual constructions are preferred among US bilinguals. Originality: This is the first cross-community examination of these bilingual compound verbs in Northern Belize (Central America/Caribbean), New Mexico (Southwest US) and Puerto Rico (US/Caribbean), three contexts in the Spanish-speaking world characterized by long-standing Spanish/English language contact and the use of bilingual language practices. Implications: Findings underscore the importance of bilingual language experience in modulating linguistic competence and the necessity to study code-switching from a language ecological perspective, as subtle context-specific patterns in code-switching varieties may be manifested not only in bilingual speakers’ oral production but in intuition as well. A more fine-grained understanding of speakers’ judgments is vital to experimental studies that seek to investigate code-switching grammars both within and across communities where code-switching varieties of the same language pair are spoken

Code-switching · Ethnology · Geography · Linguistics · Modal verb · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Puerto rican · Sociology · Verb · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies