Search Results (9)

In the last decades, ethnolinguistic Otherness has assumed an increasingly prominent position in many audiovisual products focusing on non-mainstream cultures otherwise quite voiceless in audiovisual media and giving voice to multilingual discourse practices where code-switching stands out as a key conversational strategy in expressing linguacultural diverse identities. This ties issues of on-screen multilingualism to the field of audiovisual translation and raises new challenges as far as the screen representation/translation of linguacultural specificities is concerned. All this is interestingly to be observed in animated films; indeed, since the early 1990s, such important animation production companies as Walt Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks began to produce ethnically diverse films offering deep sociolinguistic insights into non-dominant countries and populations whose richness is conveyed on the screen by dialogues interspersed with their native languages, acting as vital symbols of their ethnocultural identity. Starting from these observations, this paper aims at looking contrastively and diachronically at how L3s, i.e., languages different from both the language of the original film and the language of the film’s dubbed version, used in instances of turn-specific, intersentential and intra-sentential code-switching, have been dealt with in the original version and in the Italian dubbed version of thirty American multilingual animated films, released between 1991 and 2022. The main objectives of this study are: to verify to what extent the original ethnolinguistic Otherness is either retained for the Italian audience or manipulated in dubbing; to observe whether and how the screen translation studies’ approach in conveying linguistic diversity in animation has possibly changed over the last thirty years; and to point out what can be achieved by audiovisual translation in terms of intercultural/interlingual transmission when autochthonous linguacultures are represented in animated films. Full article

In heritage language acquisition studies, it has been observed that heritage speakers may experience a shift of language dominance from the heritage language to the majority language due to input quantity and quality factors. The appearance of code-switching in the productions of multilingual speakers has been well attested and has been mostly linked to age and language dominance as well as family language policies and consistence of input, among other factors. For the appearance of code-switching, our cross-sectional study analyses language dominance (MLU) and fluency (w/minute) along with child-external factors, such as family language policies, family language and siblings’ interaction, in sixteen multilingual children (mean age 5;7) being raised in Germany with German and Catalan (and another L1) simultaneously. In a nutshell, children who are dominant in the majority language ultimately code-switch more frequently than the other groups. Interestingly, balanced and heritage-language-dominant children present instances of intrasentential code-switching (particularly insertions and alternations), while intersentential code-switching is frequent across all groups. When families have chosen the ‘one person-one language’ strategy and do not have a family language, code-switching is almost absent. Finally, sibling groups using both the heritage and the majority languages in their interactions show low code-switching rates. Full article

The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence repetition task containing unilingual stimuli and codeswitched stimuli within prepositional phrases (PPs). Cross-language errors, that is, codeswitches that were not part of the stimulus sentences, were taken as evidence of difficulties in language control. Specifically, we investigated cross-language errors as a function of stimulus sentence type (codeswitched or unilingual), CS site within the PP, directionality (English or Hebrew stimulus sentences), and group status (children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)). We also examined cross-language errors in terms of word class and locus in the sentence. The participants were 65 English (home language)–Hebrew (societal language) bilinguals with TLD and 13 with DLD, ages 5;5–6;10 (M = 5;11). Stimulus sentences contained five codeswitch conditions within prepositional phrases, for example, a codeswitched preposition (P) or a codeswitched preposition, determiner and noun (P+DET+N), and a ‘no switch’ condition. The stimuli were 36 English and 36 Hebrew sentences (+24 fillers) matched for semantic content and syntax. English sentences contained switches to Hebrew, and Hebrew sentences contained switches to English. The results showed more cross-language errors for codeswitched than unilingual sentence stimuli. The children with TLD showed a directionality effect, producing more cross-language errors in Hebrew sentence stimuli than in English, but the children with DLD did not. The children with DLD had more cross-language errors than their peers with TLD for English stimuli. Most cross-language errors appeared in the sentence-final, adverbial temporal phrase. Findings are discussed in terms of language co-activation and competition in order to account for the difference in performance on unilingual versus codeswitched stimuli and in light of sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic factors to account for the directionality effect among children with TLD and the lack thereof among children with DLD. Full article

Code-switching is a complex bilingual behavior that can be affected by a variety of factors related to characteristics of the speaker, the interlocutor, and the broader sociolinguistic context. A better understanding of these factors is important for interpreting children’s use of code-switching in different elicitation contexts across research studies and in applied settings, such as language sample analysis for clinical assessment. In the current study, we used a conversation sample protocol with a code-switching adult interlocutor to examine the use of English, Spanish, intra-sentential and inter-sentential code-switching, and alignment with the interlocutor by Spanish/English bilingual children with a wide range of language abilities. In a single-language comparison condition, the same examiner engaged the child in conversation using only English or only Spanish. Key findings include that children exhibited limited use of code-switching in the English condition and similar frequency of code-switching in the Spanish, compared to the code-switching, conditions. Children exhibited a tendency to align with the examiner in their use of English vs. Spanish and their use of intra-sentential code-switching during the code-switching context, although they generally code-switched less than the examiner. There was also considerable variability across children. Predictors of this variability included children’s age and language proficiency. However, language proficiency was not associated with the frequency of children’s intra-sentential code-switching in a code-switching context. Parent-report measures of code-switching experience exhibited limited associations with the children’s observed code-switching behavior; inter-sentential switches into English showed the most direct associations. Based on the findings from this exploratory study, we highlight the importance of including a code-switching context when analyzing language samples from bilingual children, considering both the target child and the interlocutor’s behavior, and continuing to refine indirect report measures of code-switching experience. Full article

This study tests the acceptability of preposition stranding in the intrasentential code-switching of US heritage speakers of Spanish. Because languages vary when extracting determiner phrases from prepositional phrases, known as preposition stranding or p-stranding, a contrast arises for Spanish–English bilinguals. English allows p-stranding, but in Spanish the preposition is traditionally pied-piped with the DP. Heritage speakers of Spanish, though, have shown variability, with child sequential bilinguals requiring said pied-piping, but simultaneous bilinguals allowing p-stranding in Spanish. Participants (n = 24) completed a written acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert scale. The task included code-switched sentences (n = 16) with p-stranding, switching from either English to Spanish or vice versa, with comparison monolingual equivalents for Spanish (n = 8) and English (n = 8) included as well. The results found that the simultaneous bilinguals accepted p-stranding in both languages, while also showing no restriction in either code-switching condition. Child sequential bilinguals, however, showed the expected monolingual distinction between Spanish and English, and p-stranding was only accepted with Spanish determiner phrases extracted from an English prepositional phrase (i.e., Spanish-to-English). These findings support the previously reported differentiation between simultaneous and child sequential bilinguals regarding p-stranding, while expanding it to code-switching. Full article

This study examines the processing of two putatively problematic intra-sentential code-switching configurations, following subject pronouns and interrogatives, in a bilingual speech community in which there are no confounding grammatical differences. The languages are Ecuadoran Quichua and the mixed language known as Media Lengua, consisting of the entire Quichua morphosyntactic system but with all lexical roots replaced by their Spanish counterparts. In eye-tracking processing experiments utilizing the visual world paradigm with auditorily presented stimuli, Quichua–Media Lengua bilinguals identified the languages more quickly after pronouns and interrogatives than after lexical items, while acknowledgement of code-switches after pronouns and interrogatives was delayed in comparison with switches following lexical items. The facilitation effect of pronouns and interrogatives evidently provokes a surprise reaction when they are immediately followed by items from another language, and this relative delay may play a role in the low acceptability of code-switched utterances that otherwise violate no grammatical constraints. Full article

The present article provides an overview of ongoing field-based research that deploys a variety of interactive experimental procedures in three strategically chosen bilingual contact environments, whose language dyads facilitate a partial separation of morphosyntactic factors in order to test the extent to which proposed grammatical constraints on intra-sentential code-switching are independent of language-specific factors. For purposes of illustration, the possibility of language switches between subject pronouns and verbs is compared for the three bilingual groups. The first scenario includes Ecuadoran Quichua and Media Lengua (entirely Quichua syntax and system morphology, all lexical roots replaced by Spanish items; both are null-subject languages). The second juxtaposes Spanish and the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero; the languages share highly cognate lexicons but differ substantially in grammatical structures (including null subjects in Spanish, only overt subjects in Palenquero). Spanish and Portuguese in north-eastern Argentina along the Brazilian border form the third focus: lexically and grammatically highly cognate languages that are nonetheless kept distinct by speakers (both null-subject languages, albeit with different usage patterns). Results from the three communities reveal a residual resistance against pronoun + verb switches irrespective of the subject-verb configuration, thereby motivating the application of similar techniques to other proposed grammatical constraints. Full article

This paper explores the code-switching behavior of second language (L2) bilinguals as a lens into the development of their L2 linguistic systems. Specifically, it investigates the acceptability judgments of L1-English L2-Spanish bilinguals on intra-sentential code-switching, comparing those judgments to a group of Spanish–English bilinguals who acquired both languages as an L1. The particular issues of proficiency and bilingual language behavior are analyzed, testing whether either factor has an effect on L2 code-switching intuitions. The results suggest that both proficiency and bilingual language behavior are relevant. L2 bilinguals with an intermediate/advanced proficiency level of Spanish were more likely to align with 2L1 bilinguals with regard to code-switching judgments, as were L2 bilinguals who reported prior experience with language mixing. L2 bilinguals with lower proficiency in Spanish, as well as those who reported never engaging in code-switching, however, were more likely to diverge from the 2L1 bilinguals in their judgments. Full article

Analyses of corpus-based indices of conversational code-switching in bilingual speakers predict the occurrence of intra-sentential code-switches consistent with the joint activation of both languages. Yet most utterances contain no code-switches despite good evidence for the joint activation of both languages even in single language utterances. Varying language activation levels is an insufficient mechanism to explain the variety of language use. We need a model of code-switching, consistent with the joint activation of both languages, which permits the range of language use in bilingual speakers. I treat overt speech as the outcome of a number of competitive processes governed by a set of control processes external to the language networks. In a conversation, the speech of the other person may “trigger” code-switches consistent with bottom-up control. By contrast, the intentions of the speaker may act top-down to set the constraints on language use. Given this dual control perspective, the paper extends the control process model (Green and Wei 2014) to cover a plausible neurocomputational basis for the construction and execution of utterance plans in code-switching. Distinct control states mediate different types of language use with switching frequency as a key parameter in determining the control state for code-switches. The paper considers the nature of these states and their transitions. Full article