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DOES CODE SWITCHING ALWAYS CORRESPOND WITH THE CONTEMPORARY STAGE OF BILINGUALISM?

K. Gigashvili

Abstract

The article deals with phonetic characteristics of Georgian language islands, embedded in Tsovatush (Bats) matrix language. Research focus is on phonetic processes in relation to the stages of bilingualism. Phonetic production of code switching is paid less attention by the scholars, comparing with other domains of the language. Previous studies have generally examined segmental features of code switching, recent researches deal also with suprasegmental level, but phonetic processes have remained relatively unstudied up today, especially in relation to the stages of bilingualism. In the article, it’s shown that phonetic features in most cases are revealed at the morpheme boundary, rarely at the level of the word. Research exposed a unique linguistic phenomenon - in Tsovatush bilinguals’ conversations in most cases there have been saved the situation characteristic to the stage of individual bilingualism, when the Tsovatush speakers changed, or ‘corrected’ phone cover of borrowed words according to phonological model of mother tongue, because of low level of the second language proficiency. On this stage, the Tsovatush society was almost a century ago. This means, that code switching not always reflects the contemporary stage of development of bilingualism, and therefore, of interference. At present, Tsovatush- Georgian language contact has been on the stage of recessive bilingualism (having passed ascendant bilingualism and equal bilingualism), which means, that Tsovatush bilinguals know Georgian (second, dominant) language better than Tsovatush one. Namely, in my corpora: 1.The words, having more than two syllables, except rare exclusion, lose asyllable (in the framework of the reduction); 2. The basis of the word is reduced in the way as of simple reduction, as of epenthesis; 3. Seldom disyllabic words also subordinate to reduction; 4. The vowel being at the end of the word moves off the basis in the Georgian loan words or becomes weak and loses syllabicity (including the mark of nominative case), which are added by the following phonetic processes: nasal consonant ‘n’, followed by abbreviated vowel, transfers its character to the proceeded vowel, because of which we receive nasalized ã, ?, õ vowels; 5. Weakened vowel ‘o’ at the end of the word causes compensatory elongation of the previous vowel in disyllabic basis, because of which the form of open structure is turned into the form of closed structure; 6. Thematic suffix consonant ‘v’ is lost. Besides, there have been detected the examples of reduction in the composite words. Due to the project purposes, the respondents were selected among the bilinguals, well-knowing Tsovatush language, mainly, the representatives of great- grandmother and great-grandfather generation, seldom – of middle generation. There were interviewed 55 persons, 17 men, and 38 – women. For 275 minutes and 52 seconds, there were fixed 446 cases of code switching.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/32/S14.089

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