Formal means for describing the syntax of code switching are proposed and illustrated with examples from Puerto Rican Spanish and English. The role of code switching constraints in determining the way two monolingual grammars may be combined in generating discourse containing code switches is analyzed. Intrasentential code switching is…

This paper, part of a larger study of bilingualism, examines the assignment of gender to borrowed nouns, defined as those which can be etymologically identified as having entered Montreal French or Puerto Rican Spanish via English. The data were drawn from two distinct data bases. One consisted of over 300 hours of taped speech recorded from 16…

This study examines the interaction between the deletion of the nominal plural marker and the verbal plural marker in Puerto Rican Spanish. It seeks to establish whether: (1) marker deletion in the noun phrase and marker deletion in the verb phrase specifically constrain each other, or (2) the system of local concord noted for the noun phrase…

Postulates changes in morphology and higher levels of grammar induced by consonant deletion processes to compensate for reduced sentence redundancy and increased possibility of ambiguity. Examines evidence provided by the behavior of two Puerto Rican Spanish phonological variables interacting with the grammatical system in the capacity of plural…

This study, part of an on-going investigation, analyzes the syntactic aspects of code-switching. A series of empirical studies has confirmed that there are only two general linguistic constraints where code-switching may occur, the free morpheme constraint and the equivalence constraint. This study describes in formal terms how the two constraints…

This study examines quantitatively the systems of tense, mood, and aspect in Puerto Rican Spanish spoken in the United States. In the community under investigation, code-switching is an integral part of the communicative repertoire; also, the codes tend to be switched at points around which the surface structures of Spanish and English map onto…

Weakening and deletion of syllable-final and word-final phonemes, a phenomenon prevalant in Puerto Rican Spanish, was studied. Two of these phonemes, /s#/ and /n#/ were examined for their capacity as plural markers. Data were collected during a one-year ethnographically-oriented study of a single block in the Puerto Rican community in north…

This paper attempts to integrate the results of the ethnographic and attitudinal components of a broader study into a specifically sociolinguistic analysis. While a variety of opinions can be found in the literature on code-switching, the contention here is that code-switching is a norm in specific speech situations that exist in stable bilingual…