Toward fused lects: Discourse markers in Hebrew English bilingual conversation twelve years later

Abstract

Thisstudy is a detailed voyage into the bilingualism of two Israeli HebrewEnglish bilinguals. I compare their patterns of discourse marker employment at two points in their lifetime, twelve years apart. The study thus adds a diachronic dimension to previous accounts of their bilingual linguistic behavior. Maschler (1997b) describes two patterns concerning grammati cization of discourse markers into an emergent bilingual grammar in the speech of one of these bilinguals in the earlier corpus-(1) the separation in language of the discourse from its metalingual frame of discourse markers, and (2) the separation in language of discourse markers from conjunctions. Twelve yearslater,Ifindfurthergrammaticizationwith respecttothefirstpattern, and reduced grammaticization with respect to the second. Maschler (1998b) shows differential grammaticization of discourse markers according to the contextual realm (Becker,1988) in which they operate. Twelve years later, I find that cognitive and textual discourse markers show further grammaticization quantitatively, whereas interpersonal discourse markers show further grammaticization qualitatively. Another pattern found in Maschler (1997b) concerns competing motivations (Du Bois, 1985) for expressing contrast-structural contrast between discourse markers and conjunctions on the one hand, and referential contrast between contrasting propositions on the other. External motivations (expressing referential contrast) were shown to override internal motivations (those pertaining to the structure of the bilingual grammar). Twelve years later, this overriding is even more apparent. In this way, the movement towards fused lects (Auer, 1999) isnevercomplete, at least not in the course of the twelve years of this bilingual'slife.

Discourse markers in online writing by early balanced English/Italian bilinguals

“…DMs in bilingual discourse have received scholarly attention in linguistics and psycholinguistics. There are papers comparing DMs in such language combinations as Cebuano/English (Paculanang 2018), English/Croatian (Hlavac 2006), English/French (Sankoff et al 1997), English/German (Fuller 2001), Hebrew/English (Maschler 2000), and Spanish/English (Andersen et al 1999;Flores-Ferrán 2014;Torres 2002). These studies are based, predominantly, upon oral bilingual data that are analysed from different perspectives, e.g.…”

“…These studies are based, predominantly, upon oral bilingual data that are analysed from different perspectives, e.g. longitudinal (Andersen et al 1999;Maschler 2000), pragma-communicative (Flores-Ferrán 2014;Fuller 2001;Hlavac 2006;Sankoff et al 1997;Torres 2002), and psycholinguistic (Paculanang 2018).…”

“…Andersen et al (1999) argue that pre-school bilingual children exhibit awareness of the pragma-discursive context of the DMs use. In a longitudinal study, Maschler (2000) investigates how English/Hebrew bilinguals use DMs in their everyday communication in Israel. Maschler (2000) found that two English/Hebrew bilinguals increased their use of Hebrew DMs over time.…”

Beyond “Contextualization”

“…), which refers to a certain state of affairs. In other words, as Maschler (2000b) put it, code-switching of connectives or discourse markers signals to the listener: "Let's move from 'language' (i.e., denotative or referential elements) to 'metalanguage' (i.e., function words like discourse connectives or discourse markers-see below) now" (p. 558).…”

“…The latter, in particular, has recently been examined in detail (see Maschler, 1994, 2000b, and the articles in Maschler, 2000a. In (24), the speech act verb suggest takes a clause as its complement, expressing the speaker's attitude toward it.…”