grammatical constraints and motivations for - University of the ...

Within the discourse, only one example is found in which a determiner signals a
switch. This is in turn 22 where the host switches from ‘because’ to ‘die’, which
is then followed by ‘French waiters’ – “because die French waiters”. Here it
appears as though the host intends to continue the sentence in Afrikaans after the
conjunction, ‘because’, as he switches to Afrikaans. However, a switch back to
English occurs after the determiner ‘die’, as the speaker appears to have no other
option. It appears as though the host has no choice but to use the term ‘French
waiters’ in place of ‘Franse tafelbediendes’ in order to fill a gap in his Afrikaans
lexicon. In addition, if he did use the Afrikaans equivalent, listeners may have
thought the expression as too formal and would even consider it ‘suiwer’
Afrikaans.
In terms of possessives, Joshi’s (1985) constraint does seem to apply. While
switches occur after a possessive, they generally don’t begin with one, except in
one instance. This counter-example appears in turn 504 – “Just because my
memory begin te …” As was the case with the switched determiner, it appears as
though the host’s intention was to switch to Afrikaans after ‘because’. However,
it is likely that the host did not know the Afrikaans equivalent, ‘herinnering’, and
so used the English word to fill a lexical gap. It is also important to consider that,
if the host was unfamiliar with the Afrikaans equivalent, his listeners would be,
too.
Taking these counter-examples into account, in addition to the fact that there are
no others, it is more likely that they should be regarded as a switch to Afrikaans
(beginning with the closed class element) which is then followed by the insertion
of a minimal constituent, as the rest of the sentence continues in Afrikaans.
A pattern that does emerge from the data is a consistent use of an Afrikaans
determiner or possessive alongside an English noun. In addition, it is important to
note that throughout the discourse, the reverse never occurs, that is, an English
determiner never precedes an Afrikaans noun. The table below (Table 7)
provides examples of the use of an Afrikaans determiner before an English noun:
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