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Article published In:
The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research
Edited by Timothy Colleman, Frank Brisard, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans and María Sol Sansiñena
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34] 2020
► pp. 52–65

Code-switching and loan translation in German-American

A cognitive-constructional account

| Sam Houston State University

This squib applies and extends insights from (Diasystematic) Construction Grammar to the code-switching and loan-translation of English verbs (and verbal constructions) in US-German dialects. After presenting recent findings about the nature and interaction of language contact phenomena, I introduce the constructional principles guiding the analysis and the data sources. I then present a wide array of data and formulate hypotheses regarding the processes and motivations underlying each type, appealing to a constructional and usage-based view of the bilingual’s mental lexicon.

Keywords: language contact, code-switching, multilingualism, diasystematic construction grammar, German, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Problem
    • 1.2Theoretical background
    • 1.3Data and limitations
  • 2.Code-switching
    • 2.1Culture-specific verbs
    • 2.2Common (non-culture-specific) verbs
    • 2.3Verbs with ‘constructional baggage’
  • 3.Loan translation
    • 3.1Loan-translation in complex constructions
    • 3.2Polysemy-based loan translation
    • 3.3Loan-translation of ‘grammatical’ verbs
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00034.dux
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