A Study Of The Effects Of Syntactic Alignment And Shared Word Order On Chinese-English Bilinguals’ Code-switched Sentence Production

Code-switching has always been an important research focus in the field ofpsycholinguistics both at home and abroad. Domestic and foreign researchers have made manygreat theoretical results, but the overwhelming majority of them are still based on the lexical andsub-lexical level. Code-switching in daily language communication includes more aspects thanthe switching of single word. In order to reveal the nature of code-switching in daily languagecommunication, further studies are needed from the perspectives of sentence, paragraph andtext. So far, very few studies have focused on bilingual code-switching on the syntactic levelboth at home and abroad. In view of this, the present study focuses on bilingual code-switchingon the syntactic level, which is specifically designed to examine the effects of syntacticalignment and shared word order on Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switched sentenceproduction and reveal the nature of Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switching on the syntacticlevel. Consequently, this study verifies and improves the interactive alignment model ofbilingual language processing and enriches the study of bilingual code-switching.On the basis of the extant theories and empirical studies concerning bilingual languageprocessing and code-switching, the paper assumes that (1) syntactic alignment and shared wordorder have effects on the process of Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switched sentenceproduction;(2) the interactive alignment model plays an important role in the process ofChinese-English bilinguals’ code-switched sentence production. In order to test these twohypotheses, two interrelated and mutually complementary experiments are designed to examinethe effects of syntactic alignment and shared word order on the process of Chinese-Englishbilinguals’ sentence production from two aspects of code-switched syntactic structures andpositions during the process of Chinese-English bilinguals’ sentence production. The twoexperiments are implemented among first-year postgraduate students of English major atNingbo University. More specifically, Experiment1is concerned with Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switched syntactic structures during the process of sentence production bydescribing pictures and using the on-line method, E-prime. The results demonstrate thatsyntactic alignment promotes Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switching during the process ofsentence production. Experiment2is concerned with Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switchedpositions during the process of sentence production by describing pictures and usingconfederate-scripting technique. The results indicate that Chinese-English bilinguals are inclinedto switch in shared word order between Chinese and English during the process of sentenceproduction. On the whole, the results of the two experiments are generally consistent with thefindings of the previous studies concerning the process of code-switched sentence productionamong alphabetic words, and also further confirm the universality of the interactive alignmentmodel.The results of the present study contribute to the field of code-switching research andbilingual language teaching from the following three aspects. Theoretically, this study yieldsinsight into the nature of Chinese-English bilinguals’ code-switched sentence production. Theresults not only can enrich and expand the current studies concerning bilingual languageprocessing and code-switching, but also can provide relevant experimental data for the researchof Chinese-English bilingual code-switching on the syntactic level, which in turn helps toestablish universal theories for bilingual code-switching. Methodologically, the presentinvestigation employs on-line method and confederate-scripting technique, which makesparticipants’ code-switching more similar to code-switching in daily language communication.Thus, the present study not only solves the ecological validity of code-switching research, butalso expands the methodological approaches of code-switching research. Pedagogically, theresults of this study can be applied to Chinese-English bilingual teaching, which provides ahelpful guidance to bilingual communication and improves students’ ability of practicallanguage application.