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Doubling: an error or an illusion?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

MARGARET DEUCHAR*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
THERESA BIBERAUER
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge Stellenbosch University
*
Address for correspondence: Prof. Margaret Deuchar, University of Cambridge, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 9 West Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9DPm.deuchar@gmail.com

Extract

Goldrick, Putnam and Schwarz (henceforth Goldrick et al.) base their computational account of code mixing on two premises, (1) that code mixing is subject to grammatical principles and (2) that “mental representations in bilingual speakers incorporate blends of structures from each language”. While there is copious evidence for the first premise, the second is far less well empirically supported. The authors imply that the second premise, the assumption of blend representations, is supported by Kroll & Gollan's (2014) review of speech planning in two languages, but this is not the case. Kroll & Gollan (2014:1) do indeed discuss evidence for the “parallel activation of the bilingual's two languages” but in terms of competition between alternatives rather than blended representations. The notion of blend is of course familiar to code-switching researchers from work on bimodal bilingual code mixing, as Goldrick et al. acknowledge, but here the term refers to “simultaneously produced English words and ASL signs” (Emmorey, Borinstein, Thompson & Gollan, 2008: 43).

Type
Peer Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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