Research has focused on English and Spanish code-switching on many occasions, but not in immigration communities in the Canary Islands, where bilingual adolescents are acquiring language in a multilingual environment due to immigration influxes.
Methodology:
We tested intrasentential, inter-clausal code-switching constructions with bilingual adolescents in Yaiza, Canary Islands. We analysed the results in relation to subordinator acceptability and language dominance to propose this community as a legitimate interest point for bilingual language research.
Analysis:
We used a forced-choice Likert-type scale to judge sentences in which the main clauses, subordinators, and subordinate clauses alternated between English and Spanish. We contrasted our results against the hypotheses and interpreted them with statistical analysis.
Findings:
Subjects showed high acceptability towards code-switching and preference towards constructions in which subordinator and subordinate clauses were in the same language. We could not confirm preference towards Spanish-dominated constructions (based on the work by Torres Cacoullos). Subjects were more inclined towards predominantly English sentences (work by Liceras et al. on dominance and grammar preference). Our statistical analysis showed that the highest rated language combination held no relation to language preference. Our findings support the possible integration of the two grammars into a single system since our informants accepted mixed language with no restrictions, orthogonal to our goal in this paper. In addition, we suggest that demographic changes in these communities might influence bilinguals in their grammar preferences.
Originality:
This study is the first of its kind to consider immigration communities in the Canary Islands as an opportunity for bilingual syntax research.
Significance:
The results provide groundwork for further investigations and are currently being extended to incorporate data from recognised code-switching communities.
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