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Triggered codeswitching: A corpus-based evaluation of the original triggering hypothesis and a new alternative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2006

MIRJAM BROERSMA
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
KEES DE BOT
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Groningen

Abstract

In this article the triggering hypothesis for codeswitching proposed by Michael Clyne is discussed and tested. According to this hypothesis, cognates can facilitate codeswitching of directly preceding or following words. It is argued that the triggering hypothesis in its original form is incompatible with language production models, as it assumes that language choice takes place at the surface structure of utterances, while in bilingual production models language choice takes place along with lemma selection. An adjusted version of the triggering hypothesis is proposed in which triggering takes place during lemma selection and the scope of triggering is extended to basic units in language production. Data from a Dutch–Moroccan Arabic corpus are used for a statistical test of the original and the adjusted triggering theory. The codeswitching patterns found in the data support part of the original triggering hypothesis, but they are best explained by the adjusted triggering theory.

Type
Keynote
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

The authors are indebted to Michael Clyne, Peter Indefrey, Pieter Muysken and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article, and to Louis Boumans for making his Dutch–Moroccan Arabic data available.