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Open class and closed class: Sentence-imitation experiments on intrasentential code-switching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Shoji Azuma*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Richard P. Meier*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
*
Shoji Azuma, Department of Languages and Literature, NCO 1400, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112. Email: [email protected]
Shoji Azuma, Department of Languages and Literature, NCO 1400, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

One of the most striking facts about exchange errors in speech is that open class items are exchanged, but closed class items are not. This article argues that a pattern analogous to that in speech errors also appears in intrasentential code-switching. Intrasentential code-switching is the alternating use of two languages in a sentence by bilinguals. Studies of the spontaneous conversation of bilinguals have supported the claim that open class items may be codeswitched, but closed class items may not. This claim was tested by two sentence repetition experiments, one with Japanese/English bilinguals and the other with Spanish/English bilinguals. The results show that the switching of closed class items caused significantly longer response times and more errors than the switching of open class items.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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