Grammatical and socio-pragmatic aspects of conversational code switching by Afrikaans-English bilingual children

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study reported in this thesis investigates the grammatical and socio-pragmaticcharacteristics of the conversational code switching (CS) of three Afrikaans-English bilingualchildren. The study was conducted by analysing spontaneous conversational CS, elicitedduring multiple play sessions. Three eight year old Afrikaans-English bilingual boys fromPaarl in the Western Cape, with varying language backgrounds, participated in the study.Unstructured play sessions were audio and video recorded and transcribed. All threeparticipants took part in one triadic conversational play session and in two dyadic playsessions.The thesis differentiates between the phenomenon of CS and related sociolinguisticphenomena such as borrowing and interference in order to facilitate a clearer classification ofthe different types of CS. The identification of the matrix language under the asymmetryprinciple is done by means of a quantitative analysis, while the grammatical characteristics ofthe children's CS are qualitatively evaluated under Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frameand 4-M models. The socio-pragmatic characteristics of the children's use of intersententialCS are qualitatively evaluated by means of Conversation Analysis, in which the emphasisfalls on turn taking and adjacency pair sequences as well as the negotiation of powerrelations.The study also aims to contribute towards a better understanding of children's CS, not only interms of insights into how CS manifests on the surface level of language production, but alsoin terms of why CS occurs on a deeper language processing and competence level. Thegeneral reasons for which the different types of CS occur, and the examination of whichgrammatical and/or socio-pragmatic difficulties may drive children to use specific types of CS are investigated, while also considering whether the context and the hidden meaning of anutterance have an influence on how and why CS takes place, and where each type of CSoccurs.The study reveals that, in terms of characterising the types of CS that occur in the data, allfour conversations provided proof of extrasentential, intrasentential and intersentential CS. Apreference was observed for intrasentential single code switched forms and for intersententialCS, which occurs due to the negotiation of context, topic and theme. Such negotiationprimarily occurs due to combinations and sequences of talk, self-talk, interaction,conversation, narration and role play.Although all types of CS occurred within the data in both Afrikaans and English forms,Afrikaans was identified as the matrix language of the corpus and the majority of theconversations. The asymmetrical occurrence of different morpheme types provides evidencefor the two-system hypothesis, namely that Afrikaans and English occur as two differentsystems within the children's brains and that language processing occurs by means of theallocation of different morphemes from both languages at the lexical and formulator level toproduce language.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University