@inproceedings{01HJ8D23BA4A0Q5711G88MAV3T,
  abstract     = {{In linguistics, codeswitching refers to the seamless transition by speakers between multiple languages while speaking (Muysken, 2000). These transitions can happen repeatedly, at various points within and between sentences and between various combinations of two or more languages at a time (Parafita Couto, Bellamy, & Ameka, 2023), as illustrated in (1a-b) below. Although stigmatized in certain contexts, extensive research over the past decades shows that codeswitching is a valid form of language use in its own right, operating through underlying cognitive and sociolinguistic factors (Poplack, 1980; Deuchar, 2012; López, 2020).
(1)	a.	Tunisian Arabic-French
		Je	lui	ai		dit	baš	yi-xarraž		il	karhba	ce	matin.
		I	him	have	told	that	he-takes.out	the	car		this	morning
		‘I told him to take out the car this morning.’
	b.	Spanish-English
		This	morning	mi	hermano	y	yo	fuimos	a	comprar	some	milk.
		this	morning	my	brother	and	I	went	to	buy		some	milk
		‘This morning my brother and I went to buy some milk.’ (Belazi, Rubin, & Toribio, 1994)

Still, the combination of multiple grammars into one structure prompts questions as to how this process comes about, especially in case of a mismatch between these ‘monolingual’ grammars (Poplack & Meechan, 1998). Seemingly, certain switches or resolutions of conflict points are preferred over others and some switches are even ungrammatical. Additionally, the preference for certain switches can depend on the sociolinguistic characteristics of the speaker or of the bilingual community as a whole (Balam, Parafita Couto, & Stadthagen-González, 2020).

In my PhD project, I investigate codeswitching in three communities, namely Miami (Florida), El Paso (Texas) and Orange Walk Town (Belize). All three communities feature high degrees of English-Spanish bilingualism, with the additional presence in Belize of Belizean Kriol, a creole language with influences from English and Spanish, as well as Mayan, Caribbean and African languages. The project investigates potential morphosyntactic conflict points in codeswitching, where the languages under consideration differ in that they use either synthetic (i.e. morphological) or analytic (i.e. lexical) strategies to express certain grammatical features, specifically intensification. While English mostly uses analytic strategies to express intensification, such as the lexical items ‘big’, ‘very’ and ‘a lot’, Spanish additionally has various nominal and adjectival affixes for this purpose, including the nominal augmentative suffixes -ón, -azo and -ote and the adjectival superlative suffix -ísimo, which are very productive and widely used in many varieties of Spanish. On top of lexical intensifiers, Kriol also has intensifying reduplication. Some examples of possible codeswitched intensifying constructions are shown in (2-3) below.

(2)	a.	I	see	a	big	casa.
		I	see	a	big	house
		‘I see a big house.’
	b.	Veo		un	house-ón.
		see.1SG	a	house-AUG
		‘I see a big house.’
(3)	a.	Esa	película	es		good-ísima.
		that	movie	be.3SG	good-SUP
		‘That movie is very good.’
	b.	Esa	película	es		requete-good.
		that	movie	be.3SG	INTS-good
		‘That movie is very good.’
	c.	That	movie	is	oanli[KRIOL]	bueno.
		that	movie	is	very			good
		‘That movie is very good.’

The project investigates this phenomenon from three perspectives, namely a structural linguistic, a psycholinguistic and a sociolinguistic perspective. The structural component mostly makes use of existing linguistic corpora of codeswitching data from the three communities and investigates which types of potentially expected codeswitched intensifying constructions are found in the three communities. Next, the psycholinguistic component entails various director-matcher experiments, in which pairs of participants, some of whom are confederates trying to elicit codeswitching through priming, describe objects to each other. Finally, the sociolinguistic component aims to establish connections, in both the corpus study and the experiments, between the observed switches and various sociolinguistic characteristics of the speakers, both on the personal and the community level. In all, the project hopes to contribute, on the one hand, to a better academic understanding of codeswitching and the social and cognitive mechanisms underlying it and, on the other hand, to a more favorable societal perception of codeswitching as a valid form of language use.}},
  author       = {{Claassen, Simon A.}},
  booktitle    = {{LinGhentian Doctorials, 7th, Book of Abstracts}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Ghent, Belgium}},
  pages        = {{12--14}},
  title        = {{English-Spanish(-Kriol) codeswitching in the US and Belize : lexical-analytic versus morphological-synthetic strategies}},
  url          = {{https://www.linghentiandoctorials.ugent.be/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/BOOK-OF-ABSTRACTS-2023.pdf}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}