Switching at Equivalent Points (Code-switching)

The Equivalence Constraint Model of Code-switching

Poplack and Sankoff (1981)  proposed The Equivalence Constraint Model of Code-switching.  This refers to the kind of switching which occurs at a point where the structures or grammars of two languages coincide because they have the same word order or constituents. This is also labeled smooth switching as mentioned in Bautista’s (2004) research.

In this model, “code-switching should not occur at a point in which the  two languages converging do not have the same word order as proposed in some earlier studies  (Macswan, 2009, as cited in Purmohammad, 2015). In other words, you have to be careful with the rules in syntax of each language if you are to switch at equivalent points.

Incidentally, in switching at equivalent points, switching is possible in every single word in intrasentential code-switching if the two languages have the same word order (Halmari, 1997).

Weakness of the Model

In some mixed-languages, switching occurs even if the two languages do not have the same syntactic structure or the combined words are ungrammatical. For example:

“(5) Counter examples to Sankoff and Poplack’s constraints

a. Equivalence Constraint: kahi chairs -war

some on

‘on some chairs’

(Marathi/English: Joshi, 1983, p.7 cited in Prince & Pintzuk, 2000, p.241)

Example of Switching at Equivalent Points

Bautista (2004) provided an example:

“I can tell you with a straight face na wala kaming age-agenda” (p. 228).

As stated by Bautista, in the sentence above, the switch is “from English main clause to a Tagalog noun clause” (p.228).

References

Bautista, M. L. (2004). Tagalog-English code switching as a mode of discourse. Asia Pacific Education Review, 5(2), 226-233. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225118071_Tagalog -english_code_switching_as_a_mode_of_discourse

Halmari, H. (1997). Government and codeswitching: Explaining American Finnish. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Poplack, S., and Sankoff, D. (1981) A formal grammar for code-switching’, Research on Language & Social Interaction, 14: 1, 3 — 45. Retrieved fromhttp://albuquerque.bioinformatics.uottawa.ca/Papers/JournalPubl ication/1981_Sankoff_Poplack.pdf

Prince, E.F. & Pintzuk, S. (2000). Bilingual Code-switching and the open/closed class distinction. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 6(3), 237-257. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1646&contex t=pwpl

Purmohammad, M. (2015). Grammatical Encoding in Bilingual Language Production: A Focus on Code-switching. Frontiers in Pyschology, 6. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4659875