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Muysken (2000: 1) also opts to use code-mixing to refer to “…all cases where
lexical items and grammatical features from two languages appear in one
sentence.” Further, Muysken (2000: 4) argues that “switching is only an
appropriate term for the alternational type of mixing (and) as a term it already
suggests something like alternation (as opposed to insertion).”
Mc Clure (cited in Pfaff, 1997: 344) distinguishes between code-changing and
code-mixing, arguing that code-changing refers to “…alternation at a major
constituent…” while the term code-mixing is “…used for sentence-internal,
usually constituent-internal use of other language lexical items (words or idioms)
which are not borrowed in the community.”
For the purpose of this research, the term codeswitching is used to refer to the use
of two linguistic varieties (languages or dialects) in an utterance, or the use of
both grammatical and lexical items from two different languages in a single
utterance, produced by a bilingual speaker.
2.2 Explanations of how Codeswitching occurs
According to Poplack (1990) (cited in Hamers & Blanc, 2000) three types of
switching can occur. Extra-sentential codeswitching (also called tag insertion)
involves the insertion of a tag from one language into an utterance which is
entirely in another language. Intersentential switching occurs between clauses or
sentence boundaries. In such cases an entire clause or sentence in one language is
followed by a clause or sentence in another language. The third kind of
codeswitching occurs within either a clause or a word boundary and is referred to
as intrasentential codeswitching.
The majority of studies on codeswitching and its constraints have focused on
intrasentential codeswitching. Muysken (1995) initially proposed two ways in
which such switching could occur. He argued that codeswitching could either be
insertional or alternational. According to the insertional approach,
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