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In:Language Variation - European Perspectives VII: Selected papers from the Ninth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 9), Malaga, June 2017
Edited by Juan-Andrés Villena-Ponsoda, Francisco Díaz Montesinos, Antonio Manuel Ávila-Muñoz and Matilde Vida-Castro
[Studies in Language Variation 22] 2019
► pp. 217–230

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Chapter 14
Complementing in another language

Prosody and code-switching

 | Pennsylvania State University
 | Pennsylvania State University
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.22.14ste
Abstract
In English-Spanish code-switching, the main and complement clause boundary is a site of variable equivalence between languages. Whereas the complementiser is always present in Spanish, in English it is only sometimes present, giving rise to a quantitative word string mismatch at this juncture. Comparisons with monolingual benchmarks reveal no grammatical convergence of the contact varieties in finite complementation patterns. Rather, prosody provides a solution to variable equivalence. Whereas main and complement clauses tend to be prosodically integrated by occurring in the same Intonation Unit in unilingual speech, the opposite is true when there is code-switching at the clause boundary. Prosodic distancing of the two languages at junctures of variable equivalence is thus a bilingual strategy for code-switching between separate grammars.
Article outline
  • 1.Code-switching and equivalence
  • 2.A community-based bilingual speech corpus
  • 3.Prosodic and syntactic relationships
  • 4.Variable equivalence and English-Spanish complementation
  • 5.Code-switching through prosodic distancing of the boundary between main and complement clause
  • Notes
  • References
References (30)
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