The Cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching (review)

This edited collection contains contributions from an impressive number of leading code-switching (CS) researchers. It is divided into five parts: Part 1, ‘Conceptual and methodological considerations in code-switching research’; Part 2, ‘Social aspects of code-switching’; Part 3, ‘The structural implications of code-switching’; Part 4, ‘Psycholinguistics and code-switching’; and Part 5, ‘Formal models of code-switching’. One of its many strengths is that it includes chapters on a wide range of methodological approaches, including the use of experimental techniques in studying CS, CS and the internet, CS between sign languages, CS and language disorders, and CS and the brain.

The contributors represent not only a wide variety of approaches to CS but also the diversity of terminology used. The editors provide a persuasive argument for the study of CS in their introductory chapter, ‘Themes in the study of code-switching’ (1–17), but could have better highlighted the different uses of terminology by contributors, and might have made a few recommendations leading to increased uniformity in the future. For example, Bullock and Toribio describe the famous sentence from Poplack 1980, Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español, in three different ways, as involving (i) classic CS, (ii) alternation, and (iii) intra-sentential CS. Only the second description is uncontroversial. The term intra-sentential is contrasted with inter-sentential in a fairly standard way, in that the latter is described as involving alternation at clause boundaries. Under this definition, however, the sentence by Poplack would be inter-sentential because there is a clause boundary between Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish and termino en español. There is in fact considerable confusion in the literature in the use of the term ‘intra-sentential’: some investigators (including Poplack 1980:589) use the term to mean ‘intra-clausal’, while others (like Dorlein and Nortier in Ch. 8) use it as Bullock and Toribio do to include switching within a complex sentence that is made up of more than one clause. In the editors’ shoes I might have used the introductory chapter to draw attention to this multiple usage, and perhaps recommend to future researchers replacement of these terms with the clearer ‘intra-clausal’ and ‘inter-clausal’. Another issue regarding terminology arises from Bullock and Toribio’s suggested equation of Muysken’s notion of congruent lexicalization with Myers-Scotton’s notion of a composite matrix language. As Myers-Scotton (2002:100) makes clear, she disagrees with Muysken’s (2000:132) view of congruent lexicalization as involving bidirectional code-mixing. Furthermore, while congruent lexicalization occurs where the two languages are closely related (as in the Dutch-Sranan example given by Bullock and Toribio), the notion of a composite matrix language is most clearly illustrated by CS between two languages that differ in word order and morphology.

But leaving aside issues in terminology, the volume includes work with original findings that have considerable theoretical implications. For example, Ghada Khattab, in ‘Phonetic accommodation in children’s code-switching’ (142–59), provides evidence that should lead us to modify the accepted view on the unimportance of nonnative as opposed to peer input. Another chapter that presents new findings is Barbara E. Bullock’s ‘Phonetic reflexes of code-switching’ (163–81). In a research context in which little is known about the phonetic aspects of CS, Bullock demonstrates how CS had an effect on the production of the voiceless stops that English-Spanish bilinguals use when speaking English only.

In ‘Code-switching between typologically distinct languages’ (182–98), Brian Hok-Shing Chan accounts for the lack of agreement on a universal model of CS by appealing to processing strategies and sociolinguistic factors. Processing strategies may include considerations of economy and isomorphism, which he suggests may account for the commonly found uniformity of the matrix language in the matrix language frame (MLF) model. He suggests that this should...