Article published In: The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research:
Edited by Timothy Colleman, Frank Brisard, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans and María Sol Sansiñena
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34] 2020
► pp. 52–65
Code-switching and loan translation in German-American
A cognitive-constructional account
Published online: 28 May 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00034.dux
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00034.dux
Abstract
This squib applies and extends insights from (Diasystematic) Construction Grammar to the code-switching and
loan-translation of English verbs (and verbal constructions) in US-German dialects. After presenting recent findings about the nature and
interaction of language contact phenomena, I introduce the constructional principles guiding the analysis and the data sources. I then
present a wide array of data and formulate hypotheses regarding the processes and motivations underlying each type, appealing to a
constructional and usage-based view of the bilingual’s mental lexicon.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Problem
- 1.2Theoretical background
- 1.3Data and limitations
- 2.Code-switching
- 2.1Culture-specific verbs
- 2.2Common (non-culture-specific) verbs
- 2.3Verbs with ‘constructional baggage’
- 3.Loan translation
- 3.1Loan-translation in complex constructions
- 3.2Polysemy-based loan translation
- 3.3Loan-translation of ‘grammatical’ verbs
- 4.Conclusion
- Notes
References
References (6)
Backus, Ad. 2009. “Codeswitching as One Piece of the Puzzle of Language Change: The case of Turkish yapmak.” In Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code-switching, ed. by Ludmila Isurin, Donald Winford, and Kees De Bot, 307–336. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Backus, Ad, and Margreet Dorleijn. 2009. “Loan Translations versus Code-Switching.” The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching, ed. by Barbara Bullock, and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, 75–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dux, Ryan. 2017. “Classifying Language Contact Phenomena: English Verbs in Texas German.” Journal of Germanic Linguistics 29 (4): 377–428.
. 2018. “Texas German and English Word Order Constructions in Contact.” In Constructions in Contact, ed. by Hans C. Boas, and Steffen Höder, 211–249. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Höder, Steffen. 2018. “Grammar is Community-Specific: Background and Basic Concepts of Diasystematic Construction Grammar.” In Constructions in Contact, ed. by Hans C. Boas, and Steffen Höder, 37–70. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Höder
2025. What makes Construction Grammar relevant for contact linguistics — and vice versa?. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 1 ff.
Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Höder
2025. Diasystematic Construction Grammar at work. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 22 ff.
Hennecke, Inga, Tatiana Perevozchikova & Evelyn Wiesinger
Wiesinger, Evelyn
2025. Language contact and creolization. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 111 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.