The Role of Functional Heads in Code-Switching Evidence from Swiss Text Messages (sms4science.ch)
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Romanisches Seminar, University of Zurich, Zürichbergstrasse 8, CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland
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Institut des sciences du langage et de la communication, University of Neuchâtel, Avenue DuPeyrou 6, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Ji Young Shim and Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto
Languages 2017, 2(3), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages2030010
Received: 28 November 2016 / Revised: 7 June 2017 / Accepted: 5 July 2017 / Published: 13 July 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Clausal and Nominal Complements in Monolingual and Bilingual Grammars)
This study aims to test two principles of code-switching (CS) formulated by González Vilbazo (2005): The Principle of the Functional Restriction (PFR) and the Principle of Agreement (PA). The first states that a code-switch between the morphological exponents of functional heads belonging to the same extended projection of a lexical category (N° or V°) is not possible. The second claims that inside a phrase, agreement requirements have to be satisfied, regardless of the language providing the lexical material. The corpus on which we tested these hypotheses consists of 25,947 authentic text messages collected in Switzerland in 2009 and 2010. In our corpus, the PA is maintained. The PFR also seems to hold, even if data is limited. Interestingly, contradicting examples can be explained by phonological principles or the sociolinguistic background of the authors, who are not native speakers. Overall, the evidence found in spontaneously written non-standard data like text messages seems to confirm the validity of the two principles.
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Keywords:
code-switching; SMS; syntactic principle; functional restriction; agreement
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MDPI and ACS Style
Robert-Tissot, A.; Morel, E. The Role of Functional Heads in Code-Switching Evidence from Swiss Text Messages (sms4science.ch). Languages 2017, 2, 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages2030010
AMA Style
Robert-Tissot A, Morel E. The Role of Functional Heads in Code-Switching Evidence from Swiss Text Messages (sms4science.ch). Languages. 2017; 2(3):10. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages2030010
Chicago/Turabian StyleRobert-Tissot, Aurélia; Morel, Etienne. 2017. "The Role of Functional Heads in Code-Switching Evidence from Swiss Text Messages (sms4science.ch)" Languages 2, no. 3: 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages2030010
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