English Verbs in Welsh Speech: Borrowing or Codeswitching?

Jonathan Stammers

&

Margaret Deuchar

University of Wales, Bangor

The Project

• This, and the following two papers present results from an AHRC-funded project on “Code-switching and convergence in Welsh”, September 2005 – August 2010.

• Corpus of 40 hours of Welsh/English bilingual speech collected for the project

• Naturalistic recordings of informal conversations, typically between 2 speakers, & 30 minutes long

• Total of 149 speakers in 69 recordings• Questionnaire data from each speaker will allow us to

consider certain extralinguistic factors (age, gender, L1, level of education, etc.)

Borrowing or Codeswitching?

• Highly controversial distinction, especially for single-word other-language items

• This study is an attempt to assess the relative value of two approaches (Myers-Scotton and Poplack)

• Focusing on English verbs in Welsh as a case study

Poplack & Meechan (1998) Approach• Borrowing and CS are fundamentally different

processes. Theoretical distinction is important • Can be distinguished linguistically by “comparative

method”• Borrowings pattern morphosyntactically like recipient-

language items • Switches pattern like donor-language items• Frequency is irrelevant in distinction between borrowing

and switches• Non-frequent (integrated) items classed as “nonce

borrowings”

Myers-Scotton’s (1993; 2002) Approach

• Borrowing and CS on a continuum• Matrix Language Framework able to account equally

well for borrowings and switches• Theoretical distinction therefore not important• Lone (1-word) EL items no particular problem: MLF

assumes asymmetrical relationship between ML & EL• Distinction should be made extra-linguistically based on

frequency in the corpus, or inclusion in a dictionary

Is there a third way?

• Are Poplack’s and Myers-Scotton’s positions notational variants of one another, or is there a distinction between borrowings and switches based on linguistic criteria which both would recognize?

• Test case: English verbs in Welsh

English Verbs in WelshTypically: English verb stem + “–(i)o” +auxiliary.

pan dach chi’n defnyddio wide-anglewhen be.2PL.PRES PRON.2PL-PRT use.NONFIN wide-angle

lenses dach chi’n emphasize-io ’r foreground.lenses be.2PL.PRES be.2PL.PRES emphasize-VBZ DET foreground

“when you use wide-angle lenses, you emphasize the foreground.” [Fusser17: 792]

• How well integrated are English verbs in Welsh?• How well can Poplack’s quantitative methods tell us what is

a switch and what is a loan?

Analysis : English Verbs

• Analysis of 3 Transcriptions (total 1h45min)– 2 conversations between pairs of women in

their mid- 20s;

– 1 conversation between a married couple in early 40s.

• Every English-origin verb classified

Morphosyntactic integration of English Verbs in Welsh

Tokens Types %

Fully morphologically integrated (Welsh verbal suffix) 107 41 95.5

Non-integrated or partially integrated 5 2 4.5

Total 112 43 100.0

Non-integrated English Verbs• Of 5 non-integrated tokens, 1 had English inflection:

mae hi’n taking it day by daybe.3S.PRES PRON.3SF-PRT taking it day by day

“she’s taking it day by day” [Fusser29: 886]

• Remaining 4 tokens: “fancy”

dw’m yn fancy eistedd mewnbe.1S.PRES.NEG-NEG PRT fancy sit.NONFIN in

gornel efo hi trwy’r nos timod?corner with PRON.3SF through-DET night you know

“I don't fancy sitting in a corner with her all night, you know?”[Fusser29: 170]

• Bare form or partially integrated? (cf. poeni, profi)

Are there other criteria of integration?

• Need criterion other than morphosyntactic integration by derivational suffix

• Proposal: choice between synthetic and periphrastic verb constructions

Variation in ConstructionsPeriphrastic: (inflected auxiliary verb + non-finite main verb)

a be wnaeth ddigwydd?and what do.3S.PAST happen.NONFIN

“and what happened?” [Fusser19: 117]

Synthetic: (inflected main verb)

dyna be ddigwyddodd, wrth gwrs.there what happen.3S.PAST of course

“that’s what happened, of course.” [Fusser4: 682]

Discussion

• Following results based only on main verbs in finite clauses.

• Excluded:• Verbs in non-finite clauses• Imperatives• Monolingual English clauses• Auxiliary verbs• Forms of bod (to be).

ResultsType of Verbal Construction

19 93946

0 0136

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

English - NOT inDictionary (all tokens)

English - IN Dictionary(all tokens)

Native (all tokens of 69types found in sample)

SyntheticPeriphrastic

Discussion

• At first sight it looks as though native verbs behave differently from all English items whether or not they are established loans

• BUT maybe frequency makes a difference?

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Total periTot synth

Distribution of verbs in alternative constructions according to frequency

Total frequency as main verb

mynd (to go) 142 27 19%

meddwl (to think) 116 0 0%

deud (to say) 102 12 11.8%

cael (to have) 93 33 35.5%

gwybod (to know) 88 5 5.68%

gwneud (to do) 67 7 10.4%

gweld (to see) 56 9 16.1%

rhoi (to put/give) 34 0 0%

gallu (to be able) 27 18 66.7%

dod (to come) 27 4 14.8%

medru (to be able) 27 18 66.7%

digwydd (to happen) 7 1 14.3%

penderfynu (decide) 4 1 25%

para (continue/last) 3 1 33.3%

all other types various (<20) 0 0%

Frequency synthetic

Percentage synthetic

Conclusions• Based on these early results, distribution of native

Welsh verbs seems to vary from one verb to another, and according to frequency.

• Less frequent verbs tend not to appear in synthetic constructions at all

• So frequency may be more important than contrast between switches and loans

• Future research will test this result on a larger sample• If replicated, the result will be consistent with the idea

that Poplack’s and Myers-Scotton’s theoretical frameworks are notational variants of one another.

Diolch / Thank You

Jonathan Stammers elp22a@bangor.ac.uk

Margaret Deuchar m.deuchar@bangor.ac.uk

Key References:Myers-Scotton (1993) Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Code-switching. pp163-207. Oxford University Press.

Myers-Scotton (2002) Contact Linguistics.

Poplack & Meechan (1998) (eds.) International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (2).