Articlebronze2008

Mixed Languages as Outcomes of Code-Switching: Recent Examples from Australia and Their Implications

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Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Abstract

Abstract There has been much debate about whether mixed languages arise from code-switching. This paper presents one clear example of this kind of genesis, Gurindji Kriol, and other probable examples, from recent language contact in Australia between traditional Australian languages and English-based pidgins/creoles. In particular the paper focuses on what has been called the Verbal-Nominal split in the genesis of these languages, which is parallel to other cases elswhete in the world, such as Michif. Here the Verbal-Nominal split is reanalysed as a split between INFL (Tense-Aspect-Mood) dominated elements and the rest of the clause. There are two classes of such INFL mixed languages with contrasting characteristics: those in which the new language takes over the INFL elements and the nominal morphology is still drawn from the old language, like Gurindji Kriol; and those in which the verb and its morphology is retained from the old language but other elements are drawn from the new language. This is explained in terms of the 'arrested turnover' hypothesis of Myers-Scotton. The original 'centre of gravity' hypothesis of McConvell related the two kinds of mixed language outcomes to the grammatical type of the old language: whether it was 'dependent-marking' or 'headmarking'. In this paper this hypothesis is modified by seeing the important causal factor in the second type as incorporation of INFL and pronouns in the verb in head-marking and polysynthetic languages. Finally some other examples of mixed languages of the INFL-split type are mentioned, and a research program outlined aiming to detect where this kind of language-mixing forms part of the history of other languages by looking at the current pattern of composition of elements from different language sources.

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References

1988Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics 1990Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics 1986Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar 1996THE STRUCTURAL DETERMINATION OF CASE AND AGREEMENT 2020World Atlas of Language Structures 1994Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes 2000A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact 2006Contact Linguistics. Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes

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2010The development of asymmetrical serial verb constructions in an Australian mixed language 2011Spaced Out: Intergenerational Changes in the Expression of Spatial Relations by Gurindji People 2012How much input is enough? Correlating comprehension and child language input in an endangered language 2020How ordinary child language acquisition processes can lead to the unusual outcome of a mixed language 2022Mixed Languages 2023

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