Diminutive constructions in bilingual speech
A case study of Spanish-English codeswitching
The diminutive construction is formed and used differently in Spanish and English, which leads us to the question
how this construction with different morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic characteristics in the input languages is governed in
Spanish-English bilingual and codeswitching speech. Through the analysis of a dataset of diminutive constructions extracted from
the Bangor Miami corpus, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how one and the same construction differently
represented in the input languages is administered in bilingual contexts. As this is a first approach to studying diminutives in
codeswitching, three well known structural codeswitching models serve as a primary theoretical tool against which the diminutive
is tested. These are
Poplack’s (1980) Universal Constraints,
Myers-Scotton’s (2002) Matrix Language Frame Model, and
Blom and
Gumperz’ (1972) Metaphorical Codeswitching Framework. The results show that Miami bilinguals prefer the prototypical
markers of each language, -
ito and
little (e.g.
un partimecito, un little
estante). Furthermore, while the data largely confirm Poplack’s Constraints, they refute our hypothesis based on
Myers-Scotton’s MLF model. Regarding Gumperz’ theory, the use of diminutive markers in a particular language correlates with a
certain meaning the speaker wants to communicate (i.e. quantitative or qualitative), which again provides support to the
framework.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The diminutive in monolingual and bilingual contexts
- 2.1The Spanish diminutive
- 2.2The English diminutive
- 2.3The diminutive in bilingual contexts and codeswitching theories
- 2.3.1Universal constraints
- 2.3.2Matrix language frame model
- 2.3.3Metaphorical codeswitching framework
- 3.Corpus and parameters
- 4.Data analysis and results
- 4.1Formal analysis of the bilingual diminutive construction
- 4.1.1Diminutive configuration
- 4.1.2Codeswitching patterns
- 4.2Empirical evaluation of codeswitching theories
- 4.2.1Universal constraints
- 4.2.2Diminutives and the matrix language hypothesis
- 4.2.3Language of the diminutive: Subjectification versus objectification
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
- Notes
- Glossary
-
References