Souad Kheder (Univeristy of Florida)
skheder@ufl.edu
Code switching (CS), that is the alternation between languages in bilinguals, is mainly conversational and contextual and is often observed in informal situations. This suggests that it is easier and more economical to mix languages than to keep them separate in certain contexts (Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2012). It is therefore essential to explore switch costs in different bilingual contexts (Heredia et al., 2001; Green, 2011). This study investigates the switch costs in Algerian Arabic-French bilinguals who frequently code-switch, using contexts in which CS is more or less typical. A total of 134 bilinguals are tested using a bi-modal (auditory and visual) design to investigate code switching during listening. Experiment 1 explores whether a semantic context that is highly predictive of a cognate at the switch point (1) facilitates switching and eliminates switch costs.
- a) J’ai besoin d’argent, je dois passer aujourd’hui à la banque. (Cognate)
“I need money, I have to go today to the bank.”
- b) Nɛsħaq ad-drahɛm, lazɛm nʤuz el-yuum ʕla la banque.
“I need money, I have to go today to the bank.”
Experiment 2 investigates whether the habit of switching between a pair of languages rather than another pair of the languages that the bilingual speaks affects the expectation of switching. Since Algerian bilinguals code-switch between Algerian Arabic and French, but not between Standard Arabic and French, a context with Algerian Arabic as the base language may trigger CS compared to when the base language is Standard Arabic, making of Algerian Arabic-French CS (2-a) rather more expected and less demanding than Standard Arabic-French CS (2-b).
- a) Ki kunt nqaʃar fi lbatˁatˁa qatˁaʕt sˁabʕi b- le couteau. (Non-cognate)
“When I peeled the potatoes I cut my fingers with the knife.”
- b) ʕindama kuntu ʔuqaʃiru el batˁatˁa qatˁaʕtu ʔusˁbuʕi b- le couteau.
“When I peeled the potatoes I cut my fingers with the knife.
Given that participants are frequent code-switchers, we expect a cognate effect to survive in the switching condition. A cognate switch is named faster than a non-cognate switch, suggesting that both languages are activated while listening and that this activation facilitates switching. In other words, CS is easier when the switch is a familiar word that shares semantic and lexical information in both languages. However, we predict that the listeners do not anticipate a language switch when the base language is Standard Arabic. This supports the idea that the bilingual’s readiness to code-switch is constrained within language use (Meuter, 2009). The fact that a bilingual speaks two languages does not guarantee the occurrence of CS. This also suggests that the control processing during CS depends on the speaker’s habitual language use (Green & Wei, 2014).
References
[1] Heredia, R. R., Altarriba, J. Bilingual language mixing: Why do bilinguals code-switch? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(5):164-168, 2001.
[2] Green, D. W. Language control in different contexts: the behavioural ecology of bilingual speakers. Perspective]. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 2011.
[3] Green, D. W., Wei, L., A control process model of code-switching, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(4):499-511, 2014.
[4] Meuter, R., F., I. Language selection and performance optimisation in multilinguals. In K. de Bot, L. Isurin & D.Winford (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Pub. Company, 2009.
[5] Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Kramer, U. M., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Festman, J., & Münte, T. F. Self-assessment of individual differences in language switching. Frontiers in Psychology, 2:388, 2012.
