Consequences of lemma incongruence

Languages may differ at any of the three levels of abstract lexical structure. The MLF model (Myers-Scotton 1993a [1997], 2002) claims that since not all languages lexicalize concepts in the same way and lexical representations are independent across languages (i.e. lexical representations are language-specific), whenever an EL lemma is selected but does not have a match with that of the ML, some compromise strategy must be taken for possible ICS. In other words, the existence of lack of sufficient congruence between the languages involved in ICS requires some compromise strategies for ICS to occur. One of such strategies is the production of EL islands (Jake and Myers-Scotton 1997, Wei 2001, 2002). An EL island is a constituent in which an EL content morpheme occurs entirely with only other EL morphemes, including EL system morphemes. Such compromise strategies can be taken at the level of lexical-conceptual structure or at the level of predicate-argument structure.

This is possible because in producing an EL island, the EL directs the FORMULATOR to activate only the EL morphosyntactic procedures. Lemma incongruence between the language pairs involved in ICS in regard to lexical-conceptual structure and predicate-argument structure is one of the major reasons for EL islands to be produced if the EL lemmas are selected for the speaker’s communicative intention.

In Levelt’s (1989) model of speech production, the second component, the FORMULATOR, gives language-specific directions. This is because different procedures must be applied to the grammatical and phonological encoding of typologically different languages. This also can be true if the language pairs involved in ICS cannot possibly be encoded by means of the same morphological procedures.

Because bilingual speakers have two speech plans available for bilingual speech, they may stop the encoding of one of them and continue with the other so as to solve the problem occurring in the production process. This means that at a certain point of bilingual speech production, for some reason or other, speakers may consider it more appropriate to continue in one of the languages. Different from Level’s model of speech production is that in ICS the choice of one EL procedure versus another is determined by the larger ML frame.

(Chinese/English)

(35) Name ni mingtian call me.

Then you tomorrow

‘Then you call me tomorrow.’

(36) Ni neng -bu-neng give me a ride?

you can-not-can

‘Can you give me a ride?’

(37) Na wo yi dian come to pick you up.

so I one o’clock

‘So, I’ll come to pick you up at one o’clock.’

In (35) the semantic features of “communicate with by telephone” are conflated in the English verb call, but the Chinese equivalent of to call me is da dianhua gei wo (literally translated as ‘make phone to me’), that is, the same meaning is realized by both the verb and its direct object as well as its indirect object. Since the speaker chooses the EL lemma underlying call me, the EL lexical-conceptual structure is activated and the verb phrase is accessed as an EL island. In (36) give me a ride is incongruent with the ML counterpart song wo yixia (literally translated as ‘send me one time’). In the EL the lexical-conceptual structure of the means of transportation is conflated in the noun ride as the direct object of the verb, but in the ML it may be conflated in the verb song (‘send’) because the verb itself may not contain the meaning of transportation at all. The speaker chooses the EL expression probably because he/she wants to be more specific than he/she can be with the Chinese verb.

Thus, when the EL lemma is activated, the whole EL verb phrase is accessed as an EL island. In (37) the speaker chooses the EL lemmas underlying the lexical-conceptual structure of come to pick you up, and thus the whole verb phrase with a pronominal object before the particle up is accessed. The infinitive to, an EL system morpheme, also appears in the island. The speaker prefers pick up for the possible reason that this phrasal verb contains the meaning of ‘to take on as a passenger’, but the Chinese equivalent verb jie (‘meet’/‘welcome’) may not. It should also be noticed that come is accessed together with the infinitive clause to pick you up as an EL island. The possible explanation is that the English infinitive marker to becomes obligatory if two successive EL verbs are activated and accessed simultaneously. Such cross-linguistic differences in lexical-conceptual structure are also shown in Japanese/English ICS instances.

These instances illustrate why lemma incongruence between the ML and the EL in lexical-conceptual structure of certain lexical items may induce the production of EL

a single conversation. The practice of intersentential codeswitching is commonly observed in fluent bilinguals in particular discourse contexts or speech situation, such as register, field, tenor, and mode (cf. Halliday 1978, Brown and Yule 1983, Coulthard 1985). The study of intersentential codeswitching is beyond the scope of the current paper. As observed in the previous sections, in ICS, it is rather common for the speaker to switch to certain EL items within the same sentence. For example, in (35) it is very possible for the speaker to say “call wo (‘me’)” rather than call me. If this happens, no EL island is produced. Similarly, in (36) the speak may say “give wo (‘me’) a ride”, and in (37) the speaker may say “come to pick ni (‘you’) up”. If this happens, the EL island still exists in terms of both lexical-conceptual structure and predicate-argument structure (see the discussion on incongruence in predicate-argument structure below).

(Japanese/English)

(38) Nan to iu no desu ka, Amerika de what PART say NOM COP/BE QUE America PREP/LOC

Christian toka ga ooi desh-oo. Dakara so on PART/NOM many COP/be-AFFIRM so

nanka before marriage sex ga dame mitai

something PART/NOM prohibited like

da.

COP/be

‘Whatever you say, in America there’re many Christians and other such people, so things like before marriage sex is prohibited, or the like.

In (38) the speaker switches to the English lexical item sex and also the prepositional phrase before marriage, an EL island, where the EL order is observed.

The speaker chooses the EL expression probably because most Japanese keep their traditional concept of sex before marriage. In America sex before marriage is not necessarily bounded with marriage, but in Japan it is usually, if not always, so.

In addition to potential lemma incongruence in lexical-conceptual structure across the languages involved in ICS, lemma incongruence in predicate-argument structure also occurs. That is, in some cases, predicate-argument structures across the two languages may differ. If such incongruence occurs, but the semantic/pragmatic feature bundles desired by the speaker activate the EL lemma for his/her communicative intention, a radical compromise strategy must be taken in order for the EL material to be accessed. In other words, even if the lexical-conceptual structures between the two languages are sufficiently congruent, the ML predicate-argument structure will reject

the mapping if a particular EL predicate-argument structure does not match that of the ML.

(Chinese/English)

(39) Tingshuo nei-ge professor hen crazy. Ta jingchang fails

hear that-CL very she often

students in exams.

‘I heard that professor is very crazy. She often fails students in exams.’

(40) Ni biye hou keyi teach English to nonnative speakers.

you graduate after can

‘After you graduate, you can teach English to nonnative speakers.’

(41) Ta jingchang bangzhu wo with my computer work.

he often help me

‘He often helps me with my computer work.’

In (39) the verb phrase headed by fail is an EL island (i.e. with all the morphemes, including the system morphemes, from the EL). In English fail can be used as a causative verb and thus takes the grammatical subject as the AGENT who makes the failure happen, but the Chinese equivalent verb shibai means ‘be defeated in …’ and is used only as a noncausative verb and thus takes the grammatical subject as the EXPERIENCER. The speaker prefers the EL concept, but there is incongruence between the EL and the ML in predicate-argument structure. The result is the production of an EL island. (It is possible for the speaker of a particular Chinese variety to say “tingshuo nei-ge professor hen crazy. Ta jingchang dang students.” In this case, the Chinese verb dang is equivalent to the English verb fail in terms of the predicate-argument structure. Like fail, dang is used as a causative verb with the grammatical subject as the AGENT. If the speaker chooses dang rather than fail, of course, no EL island will be produced. In other words, shibai and dang are two separate lexical entries.) In (40) the RECIPIENT is introduced by the prepositional phrase headed by to, the English indirect object dative construction. By contrast, the equivalent Chinese verb phrase headed by jiao (‘teach’) only permits the double object construction (e.g. “jiao ta English” (‘teach him English’)). Again, since the

introduced by the verb itself. Again, the speaker’s choice of the EL material is realized as an EL island because of the incongruence between the EL and ML in predicate-argument structure.