The majority of the world's population speaks at least two languages, therefore it is vital that we use multilingual data to develop sound theories of language comprehension, processing and use. How individuals combine their languages in the same sentence or conversation - a practice known as code-switching - also helps us to understand the limits and possibilities inherent to human language.
The main aim of the “ConfliGram” project was to investigate how an individual who speaks two languages, one possessing grammatical gender and one without, combines the two languages in a mixed nominal construction. To do this, I collected naturalistic and experimental data from two language pairs: Purepecha-Spanish, whose speakers live in Michoacán in western Mexico, and Tsova-Tush--Georgian, whose speakers can be found in one village in eastern Georgia. In both cases, one of the languages can be considered a minority language, Purepecha (isolate) and Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Daghestanian), while the other is the more dominant, national language, namely Spanish (Indo-European) and Georgian (Kartvelian) respectively. In the case of Purepecha-Spanish, the national language possesses a binary gender system (masculine/feminine), whereas in the Tsova-Tush--Georgian case, it is the minority language that has a gender system (five genders: masculine animate, feminine animate and three 'neuter' genders).
Previous research shows that speakers of different language pairs deal with this grammatical conflict in different ways. This project therefore sought to answer the following research questions:
i. What strategy or strategies do Purepecha-Spanish and Tsova-Tush--Georgian use for assigning gender to otherwise genderless nouns?
ii. What role do age, gender, age of acquisition, language dominance and the sociolinguistic status of the languages play in the strategy or strategies adopted by these bilinguals? How do social and linguistic factors interact to affect and predict gender assignment strategies?
iii. What implications do the findings of this project have for current theories of code-switching, in terms of production and comprehension? How can they help to refine current predictions of code-switching and bilingual grammar?
By recognising code-switching as a natural, yet complex, phenomenon, we can also help to destigmatise it, as well as its occurrence in minority language contexts.
