A Study On Markedness And Unmarkedness Of Uygur-chinese Code-switching In Conversation By Uygur In The Family Setting

Code-switching is a kind of bilingual phenomenon, which refers to the alternative use of two different languages in the same or different turns. As one of the consequences of language contact, code-switching has drawn the attention of researchers home and abroad. The present study aims to analyze markedness and unmarkedness of Uygur-Chinese code-switching in conversation between family members of Uygur bilinguals in the family setting, and attempts to obtain the lexical and syntactic features of markedness and unmarkedness of Uygur-Chinese code-switching, to investigate the effect of age and gender on the markedness and unmarkedness of Uygur-Chinese code-switching.Based on the 21 hours and 32 minutes'recording of oral conversations between family members of Min Kao Min Uygur bilinguals in the family setting, 243 adjacent pairs, 486 turns and 547 sentences were collected from the transcription. The analysis is both qualitative and quantitative. The main results are as follows:First, Uygur is the unmarked code between family members in daily communication, on the other hand the mixed code and Chinese are the marked code between family members in daily communication, and Chinese takes the higher degree of markedness than the mixed code. The occurance of Chinese as the markedness of code-switching is more than that of Chinese as unmarkedness of code-switching.Second, switching on words takes greater frequency than phrases for both the unmarkedness and markedness of code-switching. Noun and noun phrase take the higher frequency for unmarkedness of code-switching. Noun and verb phrase take the higher frequency for markedness of code-switching.Third, the turns of simple sentence take the most percentage for the unmarkedness of code-switching and there are few differences between the turns in the patterns of compound sentence and sentences for the unmarkedness of code-switching with mixed code.The turns of sentences take the most percentage for the markedness of code-switching in the mixed code. The unmarkedness of code-switching with Chinese all occured in the turns of simple sentence and they are all non subject-predicate sentence. Most of the markedness of code-switching with Chinese took place in the turns of verb non subject-predicate sentences.Fourth, age and gender influence the code choice of unmarkedness and markedness of Uygur-Chinese code-switching, the older tends to use more Uygur for the unmarkedness of code-switching, the younger tends to use more Chinese for the markedness of code-switching. Male tends to use more Uygur for the unmarkedness of code-switching and more mixed code for the markedness of code-switching than female. Female tends to use more mixed code for the unmarkedness of code-switching and more Chinese for the markedness of code-switching than male.