FORUM: Toward a Phenomenology of Interviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43940/1/11422_2005_Article_9001.pd

Baby-Steps towards Building a Spanglish Language Model

Abstract. Spanglish is the simultaneous use, or alternating of both, traditional Spanish and English within the same conversational event. This interlanguage is commonly used in U.S. populations with large percentages of Spanish speakers. Despite the popularity of this dialect, and the wide spread of automated voice systems, currently there are no spoken dialog applications that can process Spanglish. In this paper we present the first attempt towards creating a Spanglish language model. 1 What is Spanglish? Spanglish has existed for a long time, but has not been formally recognized as a language, nor has it been classified as a particular linguistic phenomenon. This interlanguage is more of a continuum of the mix between English and Spanish. From a linguistic point of view, it is difficult to decide what to consider Spanglish. It is debatable whether to consider Spanglish as an interlanguage, a pidgin, or a creole language. An interlanguage is a language that is often spoken between linguistic borders [1]; Spanglish does not fit this category, as it is also spoke

Language alternation in infant bilinguals: A developmental approach to codeswitching

Taking as its starting-point the total lack of data on infant code switching, this anonymously peer-reviewed article tackles three aspects of the question: methodological problems in the identification and analysis of infant switching incidences; the need for a qualitative, contextualised approach; and the provision of comprehensive new data. Carefully collected unique developmental data from two children was used to analyse over 50 switching incidences between age 1,3 and 3,0, each time checking the switch against the child’s actual lexical knowledge and the language context (German, English or bilingual). Surprisingly, results show that switching for emphatic effect appears as the earliest form, with sociolinguistically motivated switches appearing only gradually. Focusing on one aspect in early bilingualism, these results have implications for the theory of language acquisition in general, suggesting an earlier capacity for creative language manipulation than previously noted in the literature