Jul 2026· International Journal of Bilingualism· 0 citations· 29 references
Abstract
This study determines the status of English-origin nouns in otherwise Vietnamese discourse among bilingual speakers in Australia. It examines whether these nouns function as fully integrated loanwords, nonce borrowings, or instances of code-switching.
Taking a comparative variationist approach, this study compares patterns of syntactic integration across three points of comparison: Vietnamese nouns (VN), attested English-origin loanwords (LW) and English-origin single nouns (EN1) and multi-word constructions (EN2).
The study is based on a quantitative analysis of natural, spontaneous speech produced by nine bilingual speakers (five female, four male). The analysis compares patterns of post-nominal modification and quantifier and classifier usage across the points of comparison to disambiguate the status of English-origin nouns in Vietnamese discourse.
Findings reveal overall low levels of syntactic integration for EN1, suggesting that most of these items reflect nonce borrowing or code-switching rather than fully conventionalised forms. EN1 shows stronger integration into Vietnamese grammar, particularly in quantified contexts where classifier usage aligns with VN norms and in post-nominal possessives. EN2, however, exhibits minimal adaptation, retaining more English-like structures and showing no transparent patterns of code-switching, suggesting intermediary mixing strategies that blur the boundaries between borrowing and code-switching.
These findings contribute to language mixing theory by providing empirical evidence on the syntactic behaviour of English-origin nouns in otherwise Vietnamese discourse. The study also holds practical implications for heritage language maintenance by providing insights into how bilinguals manage grammar and vocabulary dynamically in multilingual settings.
This research provides a nuanced variationist analysis of English-origin nouns in Vietnamese discourse. It contributes to the study of mixing strategies between English and Vietnamese, an understudied language pair. Methodologically, this study adds to the growing body of studies that use quantitative and comparative methodology for identifying linguistic patterns.
The status of insertions in the context of language mixing has been debated for some decades. This paper contributes new data by investigating the language of plural marking on English-origin nouns in a Hindi matrix in written and spoken Hindi–English in India. The central question was whether insertions should be regarded as loanwords or code-switches.
Google search results were tallied out for Hindi- and English-plural-marked English-origin nouns in Devanagari script. A spoken corpus of YouTube interviews of Bollywood personalities was also analysed quantitatively.
Over 60 common English-origin words were analysed in detail through Google searches. The Bollywood corpus consisted of interviews with 28 male and female speakers, and contained over 140,000 words. Basic statistical analyses in the form of chi-square tests were carried out to compare the distributions of tokens of interest.
The Google searches showed that English-origin words fell into three categories, based on the relative preference for Hindi or English plural marking. The category for which Hindi plurals were dominant clearly contained established loanwords, but the other two categories showed characteristics of both loanwords and code-switches. The Bollywood interviewees showed an overwhelming preference for English plural marking on English-origin nouns in a Hindi matrix, and hence for code-switching as the primary strategy for single-word insertions.
This is the first attempt to disambiguate loanwords and code-switches in Hindi–English by combining online usage patterns with conversational data from a spoken corpus.
Generalisations along the lines of ‘English-origin word
x
in a Hindi matrix is a loanword/code-switch’ or ‘Hindi-English bilinguals incorporate English insertions into a Hindi matrix as loanwords/code-switches’ are unhelpful, and likely to be grossly imprecise given the large and internally variable bilingual population of India. Future research should take into account key sociolinguistic variables and the nature of the speech situation.
Aung Si· International Journal of Bil...· 0 citations
This study employs the comparative-inductive method prevalent in research on cross-linguistic transfer within multilingual production. Taking Chinese, English and Japanese writing samples collected from nine student participants as research data, it conducts cross-text comparisons to investigate lexical errors in tri-lingual Japanese writing and clarify core issues including the sources and frequency distribution of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) transfer. The results demonstrate that content words yield a higher overall error rate than function words. Statistically significant differences exist in error rates among subcategories of content words (namely nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), whereas no significant differences are detected within the category of function words, which consist of auxiliary verbs, particles and other function-word items. From an individual learner perspective, both L1 and L2 transfer exhibit considerable individual variability in the use of either content or function words, with far more prominent divergence observed in content word usage. On the whole, content words involve a higher proportion of cross-linguistic transfer than function words, and instances of L1 transfer appear substantially more fre-quently than those of L2 transfer
Ma You, Hui Shi· Social Sciences and Humaniti...· 0 citations
Recently, contact linguistics has become increasingly interested in multiword units. At the same time, the code-copying framework (CCF) includes the notion of mixed copies (MCs) that are in-between global copies (‘borrowing’) and selective copies (‘structural change’) and illustrate the transition between the lexicon and grammar. The research question is: What types of MCs occur in English-Estonian bilingual speech?
The data were transcribed, and MCs identified, annotated, and classified according to their structure. English items were searched for in Estonian dictionaries to establish their Estonian equivalents or conventionalization of such items. The frequencies of MCs and their Estonian equivalents were also searched on Google to determine whether the MCs occur outside the corpus.
Three datasets were analysed: written texts from 44 blogs (385,124 tokens), spoken data from 10 vlogs (117,555 tokens), and 8 podcasts (77,277 tokens). Quantitative analyses of the various MC types were conducted, followed by a qualitative analysis of representative examples.
Compound nouns constitute the majority of MCs, followed by idioms, phrasal compounds, and a small number of compound verbs. No frame-changing MCs (i.e., MCs resulting in grammatical change) were attested. Since compound nouns and analytic verbs occur in both languages, structural similarity may be a facilitating factor in copying.
The notion of MCs is not widely used. Research typically focuses on particular types of items (e.g., compound nouns or verbs); here, however, the question is reversed: which types of items yield MCs?
It was established that the proportion of MCs in the data is comparable to that of selective copies. Within MCs, the globally copied element renders the remaining part more specific, highlighting the importance of meaning in contact-induced language change. MCs are also present on the Estonian internet and, in some cases, outnumber their Estonian equivalents, if such equivalents exist.
A. Verschik, H. Kask· International Journal of Bil...· 0 citations
The article addresses the problem of crosslinguistic comparison of verbo-nominal stable collocations that occupy an intermediate position between free word combinations and phraseological units. The material includes scholarly works on contrastive linguistics and studies of these constructions in Germanic studies and Russian studies. It is established that linguistics lacks both a comprehensive picture of the functioning of these units and a universal system of criteria for delimiting them from adjacent phenomena. It is found that existing methods of contrastive analysis prove ineffective for their comparison. The aim of the study is to identify a prospective methodology for the comparative description of verbo-nominal predicative collocations in divergent languages (on the material of German and Russian). The relevance of the research is determined by the special significance of cross-linguistic studies for language pedagogy, lexicography, and natural language processing. The novelty lies in combining the principles of contrastive linguistics and typology. A methodology is proposed that combines unidirectional comparative analysis with reliance on a set of typological parameters as a specifically constructed benchmark for comparison. It is proven that this approach overcomes limitations associated with the intermediate status of the studied units, which creates a basis for conducting contrastive studies on other languages and improving machine algorithms.
With empirical research on Standard Scottish English showing a bias towards phonology, the aim of the current
study is to contribute to the morpho-syntactic documentation of this variety. Relying on Standard Southern British English for
comparison, we concentrate on four eWAVE features on which the varieties have been noted to diverge: (i)
youse
as
a second person plural pronoun, (ii) extended uses of the progressive, (iii) epistemic
mustn’t
, and (iv)
quotative
like
. We use questionnaire data, where respondents indicate how many speakers in their home country use
a particular feature. Ratings are elicited from 43 English and 61 Scottish participants (mostly university students) for two usage
contexts, (informal) speech and (semi-formal) writing. Our findings corroborate expert ratings in eWAVE and show that the reported
currency of all features is higher in Standard Scottish English, albeit to varying degrees. Our study draws attention to the
complementary potential of questionnaire data in World Englishes research.
Ole Schützler, Lukas Sönning, Fabian Vetter et al.· English World-Wide. A Journa...· 0 citations
Conversion is a fertile resource of word-formation in English. Its degree of productivity is often reflected in the high incidence of converted lexemes in language resources, for instance dictionaries and corpora. With the main aim of surveying the alleged relationship between morphological productivity and frequency, this study examines English verbs derived by denominal conversion between 1990 and 2019. The analysis of a dataset compiled from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reveals a concentration of converted verbs within the lowest frequency bands. The scarcity of converted verbs in mid-to-high frequency bands suggests that, while morphologically viable, they rarely achieve broad lexical entrenchment. This underscores the often ephemeral nature of the output of highly productive word-formation processes, with many formations remaining marginal or specialized in use, contingent upon their semantic categorization. It is noteworthy that, while the OED documents a significant number of converted verbs, the COCA data indicates that many of these remain peripheral in discourse. The prominence of converted verbs in the OED’s lowest bands suggests their recognition without widespread usage, consistent with prior observations that conversion frequently yields nonce formations and contextdependent lexical items. The semantic distribution of converted verbs further elucidates their productivity and frequency patterns. Instrumental verbs dominate, reflecting technological influence, while performative verbs also show remarkable representation. Overall, the findings confirm that denominal conversion is a productive but predominantly low-frequency process, shaped by morphosyntactic and semantic constraints.
Jesús Fernández-Domínguez· Arbeiten aus Anglistik und A...· 0 citations
