Code-switching in spontaneous bilingual speech

这项由宾夕法尼亚州立大学的蕾娜·托雷斯·卡库洛斯和渥太华大学的莎娜·波拉克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。双语者用不同的语言交替使用不同的语音片段，即使是在与同一对话者谈论同一话题时也是如此。除了简单地插入来自另一种语言的孤立单词外，这种代码转换可能涉及将来自不同语言的整个短语并列在同一言语事件中。教育工作者、记者和其他公众人物经常贬低语码转换是随意的混合，然而现在人们知道，那些语码转换的人实际上是最熟练的双语者。仍然是一个难题的是管理代码转换的规则。这个项目将通过训练学生分析自然双语语音来整合研究和教育。该项目将促进国际大学间的合作，通过揭示双语演讲的系统模式，结果将有助于抵消人们对经常被贴上西班牙英语标签的贬低。新墨西哥州西班牙语-英语双语语料库是在NSF的支持下构建的，它包含了大量的自发双语对话中产生的实例，为语码转换的科学研究提供了合适的数据库。将对转录的录音进行全面的语言标记，并将根据这一基础设施进行系统的量化分析，以解决两类问题。一是语码转换的语言学条件：双语者更喜欢语流中的哪些句法和韵律点进行语码转换？另一个是涉及的认知过程：语境因素，如同源词和对话者的语言选择，是否起到触发作用？通过统计存在和不存在语码转换的实例，研究人员将能够区分特殊符号和社区规范，以及罕见的语码转换模式，估计特定地点的语码转换倾向，并评估被假设为限制语码转换模式的语境因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.