Shona-English code-mixing in the speech of students at the University of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Code-mixing (hereafter CM) is a worldwide communicative phenomenon that obtains in language contact situations and is well documented especially in the context of third-world societies. However, little or no systematic attention has been paid to Shona-English CM. Shona-English CM can be found in a number of domains in Zimbabwean society, mostly in the urban areas, and often the younger generation constitutes the most active mixers in informal interactions. This article is concerned with the code-mixing behaviour of Shona-English bilingual students at the University of Zimbabwe. These students have Shona as their mother-tongue (L1) and English as their second language (L2). I will explore how Shona morphosyntactic structure constrains and integrates English lexical items and phrases to form Shona-English mixed constructions. Two major observations are made. First, it is shown that for a Shona-English code-mixed structure to be acceptable the morphosyntactic structure of English must conform to the morphosyntactic structure rules of Shona. Secondly, it is noted that the English the students use is also of considerable lexical and syntactic complexity and retains much of its semantic and syntactic integrity when it appears in mixed utterances of terms. The data collected for this study reveal that CM involves the integration of English descriptive adjectives, nouns, locatives and verbs.

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