The syntactic patterns of code-switching in Ekegusii-English
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Date
2012-06-14
Authors
Bitutu, Teresa
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Abstract
This research was carried out to identify the syntactic patterns of code-switching in Ekegusii -English and any syntactic constraint on the code-switching that there may be. What is meant by constraint here is that two elements in a sentence cannot collocate if they are in two different codes because the construction would be ungrammatical.
Data (code-switching utterances) was collected from a total of 43 (forty three) Ekegusii - English speakers and it was supplemented by the researcher's intuitive code-switch constructions. The results revealed that there exist certain syntactic constrains on code-switching. The findings were grouped into two, that is, code-switching patterns and code-switching constraints. These were further grouped according to the sequence of the codes, i.e. Ekegusii -English and English -Ekegusii. In the Ekegusii-English sequence, a total of 21 (twenty one) patterns were identified while the constraints numbered 16(sixteen).English-Ekegusii had 20 (twenty) patterns with 10 (ten) constraints structures.
The Ekegusii - English constraints were compared with those of other code-switches. Ekegusii-English had seven constraints in common with Spanish-English, three with Russian-French, one with Yoruba-English and five out of the seven claimed to be universal with a few exceptions in some of the constraints.
The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 comprises the introduction and research methodology. Chapter 2 contains the Theoretical Framework and Literature Review. Chapter 3 briefly discusses some syntactic similarities and differences in the two codes. The discussion is mainly based on the internal structures of the Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase. The findings of the research are presented and discussed in chapter 4. A summary of the findings and the conclusion are contained in chapter 5.
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in Kenyatta University.
Keywords
Code-- Switching Linguistics