Language mixing and exoskeletal theory: A case study of word-internal mixing in American Norwegian

Abstract

This paper discusses word-internal mixing in American Norwegian. The data show that the functional vocabulary is Norwegian whereas many of the lexical content items come from English. We argue that language mixing provides important evidence for grammatical theory: Specifically, the data support a late-insertion exoskeletal model of grammar like Distributed Morphology, in which the primitives of syntax are abstract feature bundles (morphemes) and bare roots. In such a theory, the structure is a separate entity, a sort of skeleton or frame, built of abstract morphemes. The phonological exponents of the roots and abstract morphemes are inserted late into designated slots. We show how such a model can explain the observed pattern for mixing within verb phrases and noun phrases in American Norwegian.

Building verbs in language mixing varieties

“…Tracy (2000) stated that the study of language mixing has a great deal to offer to linguistic theory, and this is the starting point for my investigation here, see also Grimstad, Lohndal and Åfarli (2014). In line with González-Vilbazo and López (2011), Bandi-Rao and den Dikken (2014), Grimstad, Lohndal and Åfarli (2014), Alexiadou et al (2015b), Veenstra and López (2016), this article should be viewed as an argument for generative analyses of language mixing. In particular, it contributes to the discussion of verbal decomposition and the building of VPs, in the spirit of Ramchand (2008), and Alexiadou et al (2015a), as well as other work that deals with the nature of little v, see e.g.…”

Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now

“…. ] from one language into a structure from the other language", and occurs quite frequently in AmNo noun phrases, forming a recognizable pattern where English nouns appear with Norwegian determiners and suffixes in a Norwegian word order [1,4]. Examples of this are presented in (1a-c), repeated here as (2) for The terms "code-switching" and "borrowing" are also frequently used to describe this phenomenon.…”

“…Much work has been done documenting and researching AmNo, most of which focuses on the Norwegian properties of the language (see [9,10] and references therein). Language mixing in AmNo has also been investigated [1][2][3][4][5], and this is the phenomenon under investigation in the current article as well. The novelty of the current article, however, lies in a detailed investigation of aspects of the nominal domain, providing the first systematic diachronic study of language mixing in AmNo.…”

“…This variety of Norwegian finds its origin in the language of the many immigrants who settled in North America in the century prior to 1920, and it is still spoken today by some of their descendants. Previous studies have shown that mixing of English and Norwegian typically involves English content items occurring together with Norwegian functional material [1][2][3][4][5]. This article pursues the question of whether or not these mixing patterns are persistent over time, and it presents data showing that systematic, diachronic changes can be found.…”

“…Still, some systematic changes are found. Examples of language mixing within AmNo noun phrases are given in (1), where the data in (1a-c) show the typical mixing pattern, i.e., English content items with Norwegian functional material, and (1d-e) are examples that I will argue are the results of diachronic change: omission of functional morphology and the use of English functional items. Notice that the accompanying references show which corpus the utterance is drawn from, either Einar Haugen's collections from the 1930s and 1940s [6] or the recently established Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS) [7], as well as the associated page number, in the case of Haugen [6], or informant code, in the case of CANS [7].…”