English Verbs in Welsh Speech: Borrowing or Codeswitching? Jonathan Stammers & Margaret Deuchar University of Wales, Bangor

The Project This, and the following two papers present results from an AHRC-funded project on “Code-switching and convergence in Welsh”, September 2005 – August Corpus of 40 hours of Welsh/English bilingual speech collected for the project Naturalistic recordings of informal conversations, typically between 2 speakers, & 30 minutes long Total of 149 speakers in 69 recordings Questionnaire data from each speaker will allow us to consider certain extralinguistic factors (age, gender, L1, level of education, etc.)

Borrowing or Codeswitching? Highly controversial distinction, especially for single- word other-language items This study is an attempt to assess the relative value of two approaches (Myers-Scotton and Poplack) Focusing on English verbs in Welsh as a case study

Poplack & Meechan (1998) Approach Borrowing and CS are fundamentally different processes. Theoretical distinction is important Can be distinguished linguistically by “comparative method” Borrowings pattern morphosyntactically like recipient- language items Switches pattern like donor-language items Frequency is irrelevant in distinction between borrowing and switches Non-frequent (integrated) items classed as “nonce borrowings”

Myers-Scotton’s (1993; 2002) Approach Borrowing and CS on a continuum Matrix Language Framework able to account equally well for borrowings and switches Theoretical distinction therefore not important Lone (1-word) EL items no particular problem: MLF assumes asymmetrical relationship between ML & EL Distinction should be made extra-linguistically based on frequency in the corpus, or inclusion in a dictionary

Is there a third way? Are Poplack’s and Myers-Scotton’s positions notational variants of one another, or is there a distinction between borrowings and switches based on linguistic criteria which both would recognize? Test case: English verbs in Welsh

English Verbs in Welsh Typically: English verb stem + “–(i)o” +auxiliary. pan dachchi’n defnyddiowide-angle when be.2PL.PRES PRON.2PL-PRTuse.NONFINwide-angle lenses dachchi’nemphasize-io’rforeground. lenses be.2PL.PRES be.2PL.PRESemphasize-VBZ DETforeground “when you use wide-angle lenses, you emphasize the foreground.” [Fusser17: 792] How well integrated are English verbs in Welsh? How well can Poplack’s quantitative methods tell us what is a switch and what is a loan?

Analysis : English Verbs Analysis of 3 Transcriptions (total 1h45min) –2 conversations between pairs of women in their mid- 20s; –1 conversation between a married couple in early 40s. Every English-origin verb classified

Morphosyntactic integration of English Verbs in Welsh TokensTypes % Fully morphologically integrated (Welsh verbal suffix) Non-integrated or partially integrated Total

Non-integrated English Verbs Of 5 non-integrated tokens, 1 had English inflection: mae hi’n taking it day by day be.3S.PRESPRON.3SF-PRTtaking it day by day “she’s taking it day by day” [Fusser29: 886] Remaining 4 tokens: “fancy” dw’m yn fancyeisteddmewn be.1S.PRES.NEG-NEGPRTfancysit.NONFINin gornelefohitrwy’r nos timod? cornerwithPRON.3SFthrough-DETnightyou know “I don't fancy sitting in a corner with her all night, you know?” [Fusser29: 170] Bare form or partially integrated? (cf. poeni, profi)

Are there other criteria of integration? Need criterion other than morphosyntactic integration by derivational suffix Proposal: choice between synthetic and periphrastic verb constructions

Variation in Constructions Periphrastic: (inflected auxiliary verb + non-finite main verb) abe wnaeth ddigwydd? andwhatdo.3S.PASThappen.NONFIN “and what happened?” [Fusser19: 117] Synthetic: (inflected main verb) dynabeddigwyddodd, wrth gwrs. therewhathappen.3S.PASTof course “that’s what happened, of course.” [Fusser4: 682]

Discussion Following results based only on main verbs in finite clauses. Excluded: Verbs in non-finite clauses Imperatives Monolingual English clauses Auxiliary verbs Forms of bod (to be).

Results

Discussion At first sight it looks as though native verbs behave differently from all English items whether or not they are established loans BUT maybe frequency makes a difference?

Distribution of verbs in alternative constructions according to frequency

Total frequency as main verb mynd (to go) % meddwl (to think)11600% deud (to say) % cael (to have) % gwybod (to know) % gwneud (to do) % gweld (to see) % rhoi (to put/give)3400% gallu (to be able) % dod (to come) % medru (to be able) % digwydd (to happen)7114.3% penderfynu (decide)4125% para (continue/last)3133.3% all other typesvarious (<20)00% Frequency synthetic Percentage synthetic

Conclusions Based on these early results, distribution of native Welsh verbs seems to vary from one verb to another, and according to frequency. Less frequent verbs tend not to appear in synthetic constructions at all So frequency may be more important than contrast between switches and loans Future research will test this result on a larger sample If replicated, the result will be consistent with the idea that Poplack’s and Myers-Scotton’s theoretical frameworks are notational variants of one another.

Diolch / Thank You Jonathan Stammers Margaret Deuchar Key References: Myers-Scotton (1993) Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Code- switching. pp Oxford University Press. Myers-Scotton (2002) Contact Linguistics. Poplack & Meechan (1998) (eds.) International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (2).