Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 10. Portuguese-Spanish contacts in Misiones, Argentina

Probing (for) code-switching constraints

Abstract

The present study reports on spontaneous Portuguese-Spanish mixing as produced by L2 and balanced bilinguals in various communities along the Brazilian border, as well as three interactive tasks conducted with fluent bilinguals in Misiones province, Argentina. Taken together the results reveal a residue of permeable but grammatically-grounded constraints even between morphosyntactically and lexically cognate sibling languages and among individuals who do not routinely code-switch. These constraints are more robustly maintained among fluent bilinguals but are sometimes contravened by L2 speakers. The data also demonstrate that code-switching does not emerge automatically in bilingual settings involving highly congruent languages.

Abstract

The present study reports on spontaneous Portuguese-Spanish mixing as produced by L2 and balanced bilinguals in various communities along the Brazilian border, as well as three interactive tasks conducted with fluent bilinguals in Misiones province, Argentina. Taken together the results reveal a residue of permeable but grammatically-grounded constraints even between morphosyntactically and lexically cognate sibling languages and among individuals who do not routinely code-switch. These constraints are more robustly maintained among fluent bilinguals but are sometimes contravened by L2 speakers. The data also demonstrate that code-switching does not emerge automatically in bilingual settings involving highly congruent languages.

Downloaded on 14.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/ihll.22.10lip/html
Scroll to top button