ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how bilingual speech itself can elucidate the structure of Code-switching (CS) and its relation to other outcomes of language contact, remembering that it is the speakers using two or more languages who are the locus of contact. CS, using two languages in a conversation, continues to amass scholarly attention. Attention to CS comes from different linguistic branches and approaches, ranging from psycholinguistic experiments seeking to illuminate language processing, to grammaticality judgments serving to adjudicate on syntactic theories, to recordings of conversations revealing usage in the speech community. CS has been implicated in change in bilinguals’ grammars, a conjecture that can only be tested via proper delimitation of CS and diagnostics of change. A widespread hypothesis is that CS promotes contact-induced change, especially grammatical convergence, by encouraging shared structures or simultaneous activation of bilinguals’ two languages. Borrowing involves lexical retrieval from the recipient language only, while CS involves drawing from two languages in real time.
