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Chapter 7. Contact phenomena

The I-language of a bilingual
  • Luis López
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Abstract

Against the common-sense notion that bilinguals have two grammatical systems I argue that the linguistic system of a bilingual should be integrated, following ideas developed in more detail in López (2020). In particular, I argue that both the lexicon and the post-syntactic operations that lead to the externalization systems are integrated. I further argue that the distinction between code-switching and borrowing is spurious and I extend the integrated hypothesis to syntactic transfer. I use Distributed Morphology to formally describe how an integrated system may work.

Abstract

Against the common-sense notion that bilinguals have two grammatical systems I argue that the linguistic system of a bilingual should be integrated, following ideas developed in more detail in López (2020). In particular, I argue that both the lexicon and the post-syntactic operations that lead to the externalization systems are integrated. I further argue that the distinction between code-switching and borrowing is spurious and I extend the integrated hypothesis to syntactic transfer. I use Distributed Morphology to formally describe how an integrated system may work.

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