A Congruence Approach to the Syntax of Codeswitching

Hypotheses about the syntax of codeswitching thus far have for the most part not taken into account such factors as the nature of bilingualism in the community where the switching takes place, the relative status of the languages, the nature of bilingualism in the community and other aspects of the social context. This paper argues that an adequate theory of codeswitching syntax is one where such factors are held to be relevant, so that the actual nature of the switching is relative not only to the language pairs, but also to other situational factors. Previous researchers have used notions of “congruent” or “equivalent” categories, implicitly or explicitly, tending to treat these as universal categories of phrase structure and looking for “constraints” which limit the possible outcome of the interaction of two linguistic systems. This paper argues that “congruence” of categories is construed or “created” by bilinguals in a given situation, with four alternative outcomes for a given candidate switch: harmonization, neutralization, compromise, and blocking. Rather than seeing codeswitching utterances as the product of “constraints,” it develops a view where codeswitching is the result of languages aligning their structures over time to achieve congruence.