Research has shown that intersentential code switching is related to conversational structure. This article argues that insertion can be explained in these terms as well. Draws on Halliday's and Hasan's (1976) notion of cohesive tie, claims that insertions are a consequence of the bilingual speaker's attempt to create coherence between utterances…

Introduces articles in this journal volume on bilingual borrowing. Each paper carries out two methodological imperatives: (1) All are focused on well-defined speech communities using a standard social network; (2) most authors were members of the communities and data was collected from interactions with their own close contacts. (Author/VWL)

Describes a project whose purpose is to set up a computerized database of bilingual texts to be used by researchers in the field of language interaction (i.e., codeswitching, borrowing, and other outcomes of contact between varieties). Current work includes adaptation of the CHILDES system to take account of the different needs of researchers in…

Analyzes data from natural Igbo-English bilingual discourse that demonstrates how the two most important manifestations of language contact--codeswitching and borrowing--can be unambiguously and consistently distinguished. (Author/VWL)

Categorization of lone lexical items from one language embedded in another is often difficult due to their ambiguous status as either loanwords or codeswitches. Following variationist principles, a comparative method is used to disambiguate lone English-origin nouns in Acadian-French discourse. (Author/VWL)

Details the influence of English on British Sign Language (BSL) at the syntactic, morphological, lexical, idiomatic, and phonological levels. Shows how BSL uses loan translations, fingerspellings, and the use of mouth patterns derived from English language spoken words to include elements from English. (Author/VWL)

Lays out some historical background to the replacement of a system of discourse marking in German dialects spoken in the United States, exploring a number of implications for theories of language contact and codeswithing. Data suggest that discourse markers first entered German speech as emblematic codeswitches and eventually became borrowings,…

Develops diagnostics for distinguishing word-internal codeswitching from borrowing, based on Ukrainian-English bilingual discourse: a typological different language pair. Focuses on conflict sites in the morphosyntactic structure of Ukrainian (a fusional language) and English (an analytical one). (Author/VWL)

Provides a quantitative analysis of the behavior of nouns in two generations of speakers from a bilingual community in Northern Cyprus. Findings demonstrate that empirical investigation can disambiguate the community-specific status of language contact phenomena. (Author/VWL)

Determines the status of ambiguous lone English-origin nouns in Persian discourse. Utilizing the variationist comparative method, their distribution and conditioning are analyzed and they are compared to their counterparts in unmixed English. Results show remarkable similarities between treatment of native Persian nouns, attested loanwords, and…