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Remarks on Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross's response: There is no “Matrix Language”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2005

JEFF MACSWAN
JEFF MACSWAN
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Abstract

This research note presents reactions to Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross's (2005) response to MacSwan (2005), the latter offered as a response to Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002) and as a general critique of the MLF model of Myers-Scotton and colleagues. The note responds to the authors' analysis of various linguistic examples and to their continued assertion that the MLF model (and “matrix language” concept in particular) is necessary to any successful analysis of codeswitching data. The authors' critique of MacSwan's (2005) analysis of some Spanish–English DP facts is shown to fail, demonstrating that there is no “matrix language”. The note advocates that researchers reject across-the-board constraints on codeswitching in favor of a research agenda which relies upon independently motivated principles of grammar for the analysis of bilingual language data, with no codeswitching-specific mechanisms permitted.

Type
Research Note
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , December 2005 , pp. 277 - 284
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2005

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Footnotes

Many thanks to Kara McAlister and Kellie Rolstad for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. Any errors, of course, are my own.