Syntactic Patterns of Codeswitching among Students in Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) in Catanduanes

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Codeswitching is a window through a language's syntactic vulnerabilities. As new features emerge in young speakers' oral register, the transmission of inherent characteristics of the Bikol language could be affected across time. This research investigated the percentage of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual utterances in the spontaneous speech of the tertiary students in HEIs in Catanduanes; the naturally occurring syntactic patterns in their codeswitching behavior in noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), descriptive phrases-adjectives (DPAdj.), descriptive phrases-adverbs (DPAdv.), prepositional phrases (PP), and conjunctions (Conj.);and the syntactic directionality of codeswitching towards Bikol, Filipino, and English.

METHODS

Through Conversation Analysis, visual cues drew 110-minute spontaneous conversations from 11 groups of third-year students in four campuses. Tri-step coding generated a quality-quantitative description of the codeswitching structure at the general utterance, constituent-specific, and general syntactic levels.

RESULTS

Findings revealed 67% of the utterances were monolingual, of which 82.4% were in Bikol. Of the 29.5% bilingual utterances, 70% switched Bikol and English. The remaining 3.5% mixed Bikol, Filipino, and English. Top in the ranking of the naturally occurring patterns of codeswitching in NPs was structured with Bikol determiner plus English noun word; in VPs with English root word preceded by Bikol verb prefix " ̃na-'; in DPAdj. with descriptive adjectives in Filipino; in DPAdv. with negative Filipino adverb plus another Filipino interrogative adverb; in PPs with Bikol prepositional marker plus English NP; and in Conj. with English coordinating conjunctions. Overall, codeswitching appeared 41.7% in NPs, 23.6% in VPs, 12% in PPs, 9.4% in DPAdv., 8.9% in DPAdj. and 4.3% in Conj. Finally, syntactic transcription revealed that 86.6% of constituents with codeswitching followed the syntax of Bikol, 85.6% of Filipino, and 48.6% of English. NPs with codeswitching tended to follow the syntax of Bikol by 86.1%, the VPs that of Bikol by 91.1%, the DPAdj. that of Bikol and Filipino by 93.9%, DPAdv. that of Filipino by 84.2%, PPs that of Filipino by 86%, and Conj. that of English by 100%.

DISCUSSIONS

Results drew quantitative values for frequency of codeswitching in interlocutor's oral repertoire, the vulnerable points in the vernacular's phrasal structures, the critical intrusion in system morphemes, and the preference of spontaneous codeswitching for the English.