PHRASE STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON CODE-MIXING

Abstract

The focus of this AE is on the syntactic constraints on code-mixing. The main aim is to test two theories of CM on my data: (1) the theory of government constraint proposed by Di Sciullo, Muysken and Singh (2) the theory of phrase structural rules proposed by Woolford. This AE comprises four chapters. Chapter One lays down the scope of this research and introduces the literature related to this topic. It presents the definition of codemixing, code-switching and borrowing. It also provides a brief summary of the two models which I will test in this AE. The explanatory power of a theory can only be measured with repect to some data collected. Chapter Two discusses the method of data collection adopted in this study, as well as its limitations. It also presents a description of the the data collected. The application of Woolford's theory of phrase structural rules and Di Sciullo, Muysken and Singh's theory of government constraint on my data is found in Chapter Three. Chapter Four summarizes the findings and proposes some areas for further research that would lead to an even more comprehensive understanding of this topic.