Grammatical Constraints On Code-Switching

Code-switching refers to the process of mixing two or more languages and the linguistic varieties within a single passage that may cause a contrasting effect.This study aims to reveal the grammatical constraints on intra-sentential code-switching in the case of Bahasa Indonesia-Chinese by collecting the data of code-switching of 14 Indonesian students in Tianjin.The objectives of this study are to understand the grammatical categories,the language model,and the grammatical constraint.This study applies the equivalence and the free morpheme constraint,the Matrix Language Frame model,and the Minimalist Program.It is found that there are 159 cases of codeswitching that can be viewed as grammatical categories in the case of Bahasa Indonesia-Chinese,the number including Noun,Conjunction,Verb,Adjective,Preposition,and Adverb.The rest cannot be put into grammatical categories as the switching occurs as the single clause;most of the clauses assign as complements in a sentence.The data also shows that the frequent repetition of Noun is remarkably high on code-switching in the case of Bahasa Indonesia-Chinese,which is 97 tokens.While the lowest is the switching in Adverb,which is three tokens,this study assumes that the position of Noun is free of syntactic restriction.The language model in the case of Bahasa Indonesia-Chinese code-switching shows that Bahasa Indonesia is the dominant language for most cases.However,the switching sentences that have the same order and frequent occurance of morpheme both of Bahasa Indonesia and Chinese,cannot be all assigned into the Matrix Language model,and Embedded Language Model(hereafter ML and EL),only the cases with switched code in system morphemes,and Bahasa Indonesia are the frequently used morphemes can be accounted for the ML or EL Model.Moreover,the free morpheme constraint analysis adopted by the Minimalist Program,suggests that the bound morphemes of determiner and possessive in Bahasa Indonesia can be cut from its bounding position,and obtain the maximal VP projection.These morphemes retain the charactaristics as a free morpheme.This finding does not violate the free morpheme constraint theory.However,code-switching in the passive sentences shows that a passive bound morpheme can attach to a swithed Chinese lexicon,where such connection can only be observed in pure Bahasa Indonesia.When the passive bound morpheme cuts from its position to function as a free morpheme,in Bahasa Indonesia,it falls to the lower PP structure with different semantic meaning,and such kind of code-switching will violate the meaning of the sentence.Thus,this study suggests that in order to explain the phenomenon of those violations,the Minimalist Program is a proper means of accounting for the data in code-switching.