In this paper, we show how some proposals within the Minimalist Program are compatible with a model of codeswitching that recognizes an asymmetry between the participating languages, the Matrix Language Frame model. Through our discussion of an analysis of NPs in a Spanish–English corpus, we illustrate this compatibility and show how recent minimalist proposals can explain the distribution of nouns and determiners in this data set if they adopt the notion of Matrix Language as the bilingual instantiation of structural uniformity in a CP. We outline the central premises of the Matrix Language Frame model, and introduce the Uniform Structure Principle which requires that the structure of constituents be uniform at an abstract level. We then review previous applications of the Minimalist Program to codeswitching.Much recent research in minimalism has focused on issues related to feature checking. Earlier approaches to feature checking required matching of features in grammatical structures, although more recent proposals consider distinctions in the values of features and in types of matching. Because phi-features for grammatical gender in Spanish and English differ, an analysis of NPs in this corpus of naturally occurring Spanish–English conversations provides a test for minimalist applications to codeswitching. We present our general findings of the distribution of types of NP constituents and then consider explanations of these distributions in light of minimalist proposals. It is possible to explain these distributions in a recasting of the Matrix Language Frame model in minimalist terms, if the construct of the Matrix Language is maintained. The requirement that one language, the Matrix Language, provide an abstract grammatical frame in bilingual constituents corresponds to the type of uniformity that Chomsky (2001) suggests is necessary for the explanatory study of language and variation in language.

This paper presents empirical evidence supporting a new model of morpheme classification called the 4-M model. This model emphasizes the notion that lemmas underlying different types of morphemes become salient at different levels of production. This explains their different distributions. While the 4-M model classifies morphemes, it is primarily a model of how morphemes are accessed. The argument is that particular instantiations of morphemes are classified as a consequence of the mechanisms that activate them. The evidence considered comes from studies of code switching, Broca's aphasia, and second-language acquisition. One finding that the 4-M model captures is that not all functional elements pattern alike. Some are conceptually activated at the level of the mental lexicon along with their contentmorpheme heads. Two other types of functional element are structurally assigned and do not become salient until later in the production process. These differences explain their different distributions in the data considered.

Data from naturally occurring code switching (CS) are presented as evidence for certain types of congruence between languages. The paper makes arguments about constraints on intrasentential CS and the viability of the "matrix language frame model" (Myers-Scotton 1993a) for explaining CS. Its major goal, however, is to discuss implications ofCS data regarding the nature of language competence and production, most specifically about the nature of lexical entries in some universal sense. This information becomes available from CS data because the existence of different patterns in sentences containing CS seems to depend on compatibilities between the languages involved regarding three levels of structure: lexical-conceptual structures, predication-argument structures, and morphological realization patterns. The playing out of these compatibilities in CS provides a uniquely available "empirical window" on the viability of key theoretical claims about the structure of language.

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