Code-switching in spontaneous bilingual speech

这项由宾夕法尼亚州立大学的Rena Torres Cacoullos和渥太华大学的shaa Poplack领导的合作研究项目的目标是揭示双语者在两种语言之间无缝切换时使用的策略。双语者会在不同语言之间交替使用不同的语言，即使是在同一话题上与同一对话者交谈时。除了从另一种语言中插入孤立的单词之外，这种代码转换可能涉及在同一语音事件中并置来自不同语言的整个短语。教育家、记者和其他公众人物经常贬低语码转换为随意的混合，然而现在已经知道，那些语码转换的人实际上是最熟练的双语者。管理代码转换的规则仍然是一个难题。该项目将通过训练学生分析自然双语语言，将研究与教学相结合。该项目将促进大学间的国际合作，通过揭示双语语言的系统模式，研究结果将有助于消除人们对西班牙式英语的轻蔑。新墨西哥西班牙语-英语双语语料库是在美国国家科学基金会的支持下构建的，它为语码转换的科学研究提供了一个合适的数据库，因为它包含了自发双语对话中产生的大量实例。将对转录的录音进行全面的语言标记，并在此基础上进行系统的定量分析，以解决两类问题。一是语码转换的语言条件：双语者倾向于在言语流的哪个句法和韵律点上进行语码转换？另一个是涉及到的认知过程：语境因素，如同源词和对话者的语言选择，是否起着触发作用？通过计算代码转换的存在和不存在的实例，研究人员将能够区分社区规范中的特殊标记和主要模式中的罕见事件，估计特定地点代码转换的倾向，并评估假设约束代码转换模式的上下文元素的实际作用和范围。

The goal of this collaborative research project, led by Rena Torres Cacoullos at Pennsylvania State University and Shana Poplack at the University of Ottawa, is to uncover the strategies used by bilinguals as they switch seamlessly between their two languages. Bilinguals alternate between stretches of speech in the different languages even when speaking on the same topic to the same interlocutor. Beyond merely inserting isolated words from another language, such code-switching may involve juxtaposing entire phrases from different languages in the same speech event. Educators, journalists, and other public figures often disparage code-switching as haphazard mixing, yet it is now known that those who code-switch are in fact the most highly skilled bilinguals. What is still a conundrum are the rules governing code-switching. This project will integrate research and education by training students to analyze natural bilingual speech. The project will promote international inter-university collaborations, and by revealing the systematic patterning of bilingual speech, the results will help counteract the disparagement of what is often labeled Spanglish. The New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual speech corpus, constructed with prior NSF support, provides an appropriate database for the scientific investigation of code-switching because it contains copious instances produced during spontaneous bilingual conversations. The transcribed recordings will be comprehensively tagged for language and, based on this infrastructure, systematic quantitative analyses will be carried out to address two kinds of questions. One is the linguistic conditions on code-switching: At which syntactic and prosodic points in the speech stream do bilinguals prefer to code-switch? The other is the cognitive processes involved: Do contextual elements, such as cognate words and interlocutor language choice, act as triggers? By counting both instances of the presence and absence of code-switching, the researchers will be able to distinguish idiosyncratic tokens from community norms and rare occurrences from major patterns, estimate the propensity of code-switching at particular sites, and evaluate the actual role and scope of contextual elements that have been hypothesized to constrain patterns of code-switching.