CODE-SWITCHING: THE SEED CONCEPTS (HINDI, INDIA).
Item
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Title
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CODE-SWITCHING: THE SEED CONCEPTS (HINDI, INDIA).
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Identifier
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AAI8629717
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identifier
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8629717
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Creator
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NAVAL, UDAY CHANDRA.
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Contributor
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Robert Fiengo
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Date
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1986
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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Code switching, a systematic and rule-governed process, occurs amongst competent bilinguals who observe well-defined principles while mixing languages at the intra-sentential level.;Since such bilinguals instinctively observe shared freedoms and constraints, an innate faculty underlying the code-switched phenomenon, analogous to other linguistic universals, may be postulated. The present study seeks to define, delimit and delineate this faculty.;The study is founded on the code-switching practices of several competent Hindi-English bilinguals and the native intuitions of the researcher. The findings are then assessed in terms of the code-switching principles presented in the literature.;While the study recognizes the generally "switchable" and "nonswitchable" grammatical categories, it is discovered that the categorical approach alone does not explain the totality of the phenomenon. For within the categories there invariably are exceptions.;To account for the exceptions, the "Seed Concepts" hypothesis is proposed. It states that there exists a set of fundamental concepts that crystallize during the incipient concept-formation and lexical acquisition stages in the child's linguistic development. Furthermore, the concepts seem to stem from the child's need to distinguish his 'self' from the 'non-self', through the sensori-motor activity.;This approach injects, then, the dimension of conceptual thought, i.e., developmental psycholinguistics, in the code-switching theory, in addition to that of syntactic structure.;The notion of "Seed Concepts" generates, in turn, the "Seed Concepts Constraint", an all-encompassing, universal principle. This principle holds that in intra-sententially code-switched speech the "Seed Concepts" get heavily marked for realization in the morphophonetics of the base language.;The notion of the "Seed Concepts" receives support from various other quarters, namely, frequency of word-use in children, the single-word acquisitions of the infant, and lexico-statistics.;Additional inquiry indicates that the present findings are also supported by code-switching practices in several other languages. The "Seed Concepts Constraint" is thus postulated as a necessary condition for the unification and elucidation of the various code-switching restrictions proposed in the literature.;Finally, it is suggested that there might exist a "Seeding Component" of Universal Grammar that defines the code-switching ability of a competent bilingual.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Linguistics
