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ASPECTS OF THE SYNTAX, THE PRAGMATICS, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CODE-SWITCHING: CANTONESE AND ENGLISH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2005

Jan Bernsten
Jan Bernsten
Affiliation:
University of Michigan-Flint
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Extract

ASPECTS OF THE SYNTAX, THE PRAGMATICS, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CODE-SWITCHING: CANTONESE AND ENGLISH. Brian Hok-Shing Chan. Bern: Peter Lang, 2003. Pp. ix + 333. $74.95 cloth.

Are there syntactic constraints to code-switching? Based on Chan's University College London dissertation, this book argues that code-switched utterances are constrained by the same set of mechanisms that govern monolingual utterances. Building on the work of Mahootian (1993) and MacSwan (1997), Chan makes two additional claims. First, he argues that functional categories and lexical categories behave differently in code-switching. These differences lead him to distinguish between functional and lexical categories in the production process. Second, he extends his initial argument to claim that code-switching and pure languages are governed by the same set of constraints and principles not only for syntax but also for production and pragmatics.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 474 - 475
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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References

REFERENCES

MacSwan, J. (1997). A minimalist approach to intra-sentential code-switching: Spanish-Nahuatl bilingualism in Central Mexico. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
Mahootian, S. (1993). A null theory of code-switching. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, Chicago.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition ( 2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.