Data

The data we bring to bear on these assumptions are unusual enough in the study of language change, let alone language contact, to warrant describing them in some detail. They consist of three diachronically related spoken-language corpora of Quebec French, containing varying amounts and types of English material, collected over a real-time period of 61 years (1946–2007), and featuring an apparent-time span of nearly a century and a half between the dates of birth of the oldest and youngest speakers (1846–1994). This may represent a blink of the eye in comparison with the time frames historical linguists like to work with, but the limiting factor is that the processes (as opposed to the products) of language mixing can only be observed during actual speech production. We will nonetheless show in what follows that the interval is sufficiently long to measure the trajectory that lone other-language items follow over time.

The earliest materials, drawn from the Récits du français québécois d'autrefois (Poplack & St-Amand, Reference Poplack and St-Amand2007), consist of audio recordings of elderly Québécois born between 1846 and 1895, which, as we have shown elsewhere, may be taken to represent 19th-century Quebec French. The speech data they contain, collected by folklorists in the 1940s and 1950s, are highly informal in nature, and although they represent a precontact stage vis-à-vis the contemporary context, nonetheless they contain ample incorporations from English, as illustrated in (1). These appear in italics in this and following examples.

1. (1) “Bien”, il dit, “tenez, m'en vas faire un bargain avec vous.” (19C.038.887)Footnote ¹

   “Well,” he says, “here, I'm gonna make a bargain with you.”

A second dataset, Corpus du français parlé à Ottawa-Hull (Poplack, Reference Poplack, Fasold and Schiffrin1989) was constructed in the early 1980s. It remains unique in terms of scale, representativeness (of speakers and speech styles), and focus on spontaneous speech production collected within a bilingual community in intense and long-term contact. The 48 Québécois retained for this study, of varying degrees of bilingual ability, employ a vast array of lone other-language items (Poplack, Sankoff, & Miller, Reference Poplack, Sankoff and Miller1988), as in (2), in addition to a variety of other language-mixing strategies.

1. (2) Puis là ils shootaient la balle, puis encore, envoye dedans la swamp! (20C.77.479)

   And then they were shooting the ball, and again, right into the swamp!

The final corpus, Le français en contexte: milieux scolaire et social (Poplack, Bourdages, & Dion, Reference Poplack, Bourdages and Dion2009), was collected 25 years later (2005–2007) in the same area. The spontaneous speech materials retained here, exemplified in (3), were furnished by 166 bilingual francophones, mostly teenagers.

1. (3) Les bigs, les riches, ils ont—ils ont tout tout tout! (21C.155.810)

   The big guys, the rich, they have—they have absolutely everything!

We refer to these datasets in what follows as 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century French, respectively. As summarized in Table 1, in addition to their time depth, they provide approximately three million words of bilingual speech, more than enough to enable meaningful measures of frequency and persistence, and the 251 speakers retained are sufficient to measure diffusion. Properly exploited, these materials afford a rare opportunity to consider simultaneously both the synchronic behavior and the diachronic development of lone other-language items.

Table 1.

Characteristics of the data used for the current study

Note: Speaker and word count information refer to the subsamples analyzed here.

Method

The variationist comparative method that we have developed for study of these issues has been amply described elsewhere (e.g., Poplack, Reference Poplack and Preston1993; Poplack & Meechan, Reference Poplack and Meechan1998; Poplack & Tagliamonte, Reference Poplack and Tagliamonte2001; Tagliamonte, Reference Tagliamonte, Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes2001). Suffice it to recall here the major principles that inform this approach. The first involves the primacy of the spoken language, which, in the case at hand, is the only place where the processes of language mixing can be observed. The second is the recognition of the variability inherent in all speech. Where more than one language is present, this may manifest itself as apparent departures from the grammars of one or both. Ironically, because variability is so rarely acknowledged, even in unmixed languages, scholars of language contact often call for more homogeneity from bilingual production data than has ever actually been attested in monolingual speech. Part of our goal is to identify such variability and make use of it as a tool to measure integration.

A related principle is accountability, the commitment to quantitatively examining all the pertinent data, to counting, and to situating the phenomena of interest with respect to other competing forms and systems. In treating variability accountably, we are compelled to go beyond mere frequency counts to detect structure, and this is what enables us to assess, for instance, when superficially bare forms are displaying variable recipient-language marking patterns, or are simply unmarked.

Finally, application of the comparative method allows us to dispel many unsupported assumptions about the results of language contact. We contextualize the elements of interest by comparing them (1) among each other (i.e., with respect to other mixing strategies), (2) over time, and (3) with respect to unmixed counterparts as controls. We also compare the behavior of the bilingual speakers (switchers vs. borrowers) who produced the forms.

Measuring integration

To measure level of integration, we appeal to the behavior of linguistic features associated with one of the grammars in contact. As we have argued elsewhere (Poplack, Reference Poplack2012; Poplack, Sankoff, & Miller, Reference Poplack, Sankoff and Miller1988; cf. also Bullock, Reference Bullock, Bullock and Toribio2009), recipient-language phonology often colors donor-language items even in the absence of mixing (“foreign accent”), so phonological criteria are not reliable indicators of loanword integration. Accordingly, the diagnostics examined here involve the syntax and morphology: word order; tense-marking in verbal constructions; and the expression of reference, number, and gender in nominals. We compare the treatment of lone other-language items at conflict sites (Poplack & Meechan, Reference Poplack and Meechan1998), areas where the grammars of two languages differ, in rate and/or in conditioning. To the extent that a lone other-language item assumes features associated with one but not the other of the contact languages (e.g., absence of inflection in a context where the other language inflects), we can infer whether donor-language or recipient-language grammar is operating.

Frequency of advancing nonces

Because of their sparseness, we required only that nonce forms transcend noncehood (i.e., that they be uttered again) to qualify as advancing. But to achieve dictionary attestation, or even acceptance in the community, a form must enjoy a much higher level of frequency and diffusion than that. How much can an advancing nonce type be expected to increase over an intermediate time frame like that studied here?

Figure 1 shows that of the 37 original advancing nonce types, only 8 could be qualified as frequent (based on Poplack, Sankoff, & Miller's [1988] criterion of 10+ occurrences): shit (n = 73), friend (44), pitch (38), drop (24), bullshit (17), hot (16), shot (15), and weird (11).Footnote ³ In terms of diffusion, they fare even worse. Only four types spread beyond 10 speakers: shit (32), pitch (22), hot (11), shot (11).

Figure 1.

Token frequency (black) and diffusion across speakers (gray) of advancing nonces (based on tokens in a later corpus of lexical types that appeared as nonce forms in an earlier corpus).

We conclude that nonce lone other-language items are basically ephemeral. The overwhelming majority disappears after their first introduction. The few that do not disappear persist as nonce forms. Only a very small cohort actually increases, and almost none reaches even a minimal level of diffusion, by any measure. Thus, a first important finding is that so few lone other-language items actually stand the test of time. Nonce forms do not generally become widespread, as the diffusion assumption suggests. Instead, much as with monolingual nonce-formations and neologisms, only the tiniest proportion “catches on” (e.g., Hohenhaus, Reference Hohenhaus, Stekauer and Lieber2005; Schmid, Reference Schmid2008).

Also as with monolingual lexical expansion, there seems to be no way of predicting which ones they will be. Certainly the particular advancing lone other-language items documented here cannot be explained by recourse to any simplistic (but widespread) view of the enhanced borrowability of cultural versus core borrowings (e.g., Myers-Scotton, Reference Myers-Scotton1993a, Reference Myers-Scotton2006; Thomason, Reference Thomason2001).

Verb inflection

Perhaps the most straightforward diagnostic is verbal morphology. When an English-origin verb is incorporated into French, the speaker must choose between French or English inflection, as illustrated in (5). According to the graduality assumption, a nonce verb form should feature only English morphology at its first introduction and in the early stages of diffusion, whereas subsequent tokens should appear more and more often with French morphology until the type is completely integrated into the French system.

1. (5)

   1. a. A few planes crashed in the World Trade Center. (21C.157.70)

   2. b. Le building est en feu, il y a une- un avion qui acrashé dedans. (21C.157.114)

      The building is on fire, there's a- a plane that crashed into it.

The examples in (4) and (5) contradict this scenario, however: in (4a) French morphology appears at the very first mention of the form in the corpus, (5a) features English morphology on crash in a clause entirely in English, whereas in (5b), produced by the same speaker a few seconds later, French morphology appears on crash as a lone other-language item.

Given the inflectional poverty of both English and French, most verbs surface with no visible morphology at all, as in (6). These are necessarily silent with respect to integration.

1. (6) Je les blast [ ] tout de suite là-dessus. (21C.501.334)

   I blast them right away about that.

We therefore limit these analyses to English-origin verb forms with morphology that is unambiguous as to language membership (7).

1. (7) Il arrête mi-chemin, il dropØ [FR 3rd p. sg. present indicative] toute son stuff, commence à brailler à cause c'est trop dur. (21C.165.56)

   He stops mid-way, he drops [ENG 3rd p. sg. present indicative] all his stuff, starts crying because it's too hard.

Table 5 tracks the rate of French verbal morphology on the three classes of nonce verbs over time. Regardless of whether they are ephemeral, inveterate, or advancing, nonce verb forms are always integrated into French. The strategy, conjugate English-origin verbs using the appropriate 1st-conjugation (-er) morphology, applies categorically to all.

Table 5.

Rate of French affixation on three types of nonce verbs over time

Note: ^aAs detailed in the first section, nonce forms first occurring in the 21st century have no discernible trajectory; there is no way to determine whether they will turn out to be ephemeral. This category is thus not applicable here and in subsequent calculations.

On the measure of verb morphology then, there is no support for the idea that nonce forms become integrated into recipient-language grammar gradually, in tandem with increases in frequency and diffusion. They do so categorically at first mention.

Plural marking

The next diagnostic involves plural marking. English marks plural productively by affixing a phonotactically determined [s,z] to the noun, whereas the French plural marker, although orthographically also {s}, is phonetically null, as in (8).

1. (8) Il fallait qu'on corrige les fautes[Ø]. (21C.109.1386)

   We had to correct the mistakes[s].

The graduality assumption also predicts that English-origin nonce nouns with plural referents should first be rendered with an English plural affix, and subsequent mentions should show ever fewer overt realizations as they become more frequent and widespread. Figure 2 tests this assumption by examining rates of overt plural marking of three categories of semantically plural nonce nouns over time.

Figure 2.

Rate of English affixation on three types of plural nonce nouns over time (n = 106).

We first note that the rate of English [s] is in general extremely low (and French null affixation correspondingly high), regardless of type of nonce. This is not what would be expected under the graduality assumption. Moreover, what movement we can detect over time appears at first glance somewhat erratic. Although none of the ephemeral nonce items are overtly marked for plurality in the 19th century (0/11), 8% (3/38) appear with an overt [s] in the 20th century.Footnote ⁴ On the other hand, the 25% (1/4) English morphology displayed by advancing nonces in the 20th century does descend to 8% (4/48) by the 21st, which is more in line with the predictions of gradual integration.

However, closer inspection weakens even these modest trends. In fact, only eight nonce nouns of any category appeared with an overt [s] at any stage. And in all but one of these cases, the [s] is lexicalized and not a plural marker, as illustrated in (9). The collocation of guts in (9c) with the singular determiner du points up the opacity of [s] in these constructions.

1. (9)

   1. a. Excuse mon anglais, mais les odds [z] sont là. (20C.078.645)

      Excuse my English, but the odds are there.

   2. b. Le juge il regarde les pros and cons [z], puis va pour le meilleur. (20C.076.1376)

      The judge looks at the pros and cons, and goes for the best.

   3. c. Moi personnellement, je ferais pas ça, aller à l’école de meme là, je trouve qu'il a du guts [s]. (21C.157.930)

      I personally would not do that, go to school like that, I think he's got guts.

When the false plurals are excluded from calculations of marking rates, we find near-categorical integration into recipient-language grammar. Only once, out of 106 English-origin nonce forms with plural reference, was an overt [s] actually used to signal plurality (10).

1. (10) Un de mes amis, il dit, “on va aller manger des wieners [z]”. Puis c’était des saucisses! (20C.098.1400)

   One of my friends, he says, “let's go eat some wieners.” And they were sausages!

With respect to the criterion of plural marking, then, there is no evidence to suggest that integration increases as nonce nouns gain in frequency. On the contrary, with only one exception, they start off integrated into French and remain that way.

Determiner realization

The next diagnostic, determiner realization, differs from the previous two insofar as both French and English admit both overt and null determiners in some contexts, as illustrated in (11). This is thus is a good example of a conflict site involving distribution, here, of bare forms.

1. (11)

   1. a. And was likely higher in 1981, when Øprices hit an all-time height [sic]. (20C.082.673)

   2. b. C'est rien que pour ouvrir uneporte, être Ødoorman, dire allô. (20C.112.902)

      It's only to open a door, be a doorman, say hello.

Null determiners are much more frequent in English than in French, with the result that a relative preponderance of them tends to be associated with the operation of English grammar. Figure 3 measures rate of overt determiner presence in the three types of nominal nonce formation.

Figure 3.

Rate of determiner presence on three types of nonce nouns over time (n = 294).

The vast majority, of whatever ilk, do feature an overt French determiner, as would be expected if they were being treated as French, though the decrease over time, particularly evident in the case of the advancing nonces, again appears to contradict the graduality assumption. But simply equating rate with grammatical structure ignores the fact that although a null determiner is avoided in most French contexts, it is admitted, and even prescribed, in others, as illustrated in (12), and these in turn differ from legal contexts for null determiners in English (e.g. plurals, generics, and indefinites).

1. (12) Some legal contexts for null determiners in French:

   1. a. Preceding a subject attribute:

      J'engage une de vous autres pour être Øbabysitter. (20C.105.1651)

      I'm hiring one of you guys to be a babysitter.

   2. b. Following partitives and certain prepositions:

      Okay, j'ai tellement deØbullshit dans mes arguments, ça a pas d'esti d'allure!  (21C.505.58)

      Okay, I have so much bullshit in my arguments it makes no damn sense.

   3. c. One-word responses:

      [IVer] C'est quelle ta position préféréé? [105] Pitcher. (21C.105.265)

      Which is your favourite position? Pitcher.

   4. d. In metalinguistic commentary:

      C'est Ølarboard, puis Østarboard en anglais, puis Øtribord puis Øbâbord en français. (19C.040.597)

      It's larboard and starboard in English, and tribord and bâbord in French.

Closer inspection revealed that all 33 English-origin nominals with a null determiner occurred in one of these legal contexts for zero determination in French. The apparent changes in rate of determiner presence depicted in Figure 3 are due to (fortuitous) differences in determiner requirements, as illustrated in the pairs in (13) and (14). The indefinite reference in the 19th-century example (13a) requires an overt indefinite determiner, for instance, whereas the one-word response in the 21st-century example (13b) does not.

1. (13)

   1. a. 19th century:

      “Mais,” il dit, “ma femme, prends unpitcher, puis va-t-en.” (19C.038.589)

      “But,” he says, “my wife, take a pitcher and get out.”

   2. b. 21st century:

      Tu es quelle position? [105] ØPitcher. (21C.105.262)

      What position are you? Pitcher.

1. (14)

   1. a. 20th century:

      Non, ça c'est de labullshit ça. (20C.076.1484)

      No, that's bullshit.

   2. b. 21st century:

      Mais la guerre c'est toute une question de Øbullshit pour moi. (21C.175.223)

      But war is all a matter of bullshit to me.

Once we take these facts into account, we see that here too, patterns of determiner usage are 100% consistent with those of the recipient language, immediately at the first introduction of the nonce form.

Gender assignment and agreement

The final conflict site to be analyzed diachronically involves grammatical gender. In contrast to English, where the few nominal gender indications that exist are displayed on a small subset of nouns with animate referents (e.g., man-cub, waitress), all French nouns carry gender, which is canonically marked on eligible determiners, adjectives, participles, or other modifying gender carriers, as in (15).

1. (15) Là après ça, Steve Vai est arrivé, la (f) crowd est partie folle (f) là.  (21C.157.324)

   So after that, Steve Vai got there, the (f) crowd went nuts (f).

By virtue of being slotted into a syntactic structure requiring a gender carrier, other-language nouns such as crowd receive gender automatically; in other words, gender assignment is a “free” consequence of syntactic integration. The measure of interest is thus not whether gender was assigned (as presence of a gender carrier entails presence of gender), or even which gender was assigned (a question treated in detail in Poplack, Pousada, & Sankoff, Reference Poplack, Pousada and Sankoff1982), but whether that gender fluctuates with each mention or gets fixed. Under the graduality assumption, we might expect the gender first assigned to a nonce noun to vary across the different iterations of that noun in the earlier stages and eventually become fixed as it increases in frequency and diffusion.

To test this assumption, we compared the degree of consistency in gender marking of early tokens of nominal nonce types with their more frequent uses over time. As with the ambiguous null verbal morphology, this endeavor is complicated by the fact that in actual production, most elements are neutral in terms of overt gender indications, as illustrated in (16).

1. (16) Ils ont la tête rouge, puis ils ont des (m? f?) freckles. (20C.109.1307)

   They're redheads, and they have (Ø) freckles.

The analysis is therefore necessarily restricted to those lone other-language items that were accompanied by gender carriers that in fact identify gender (such as the determiner and participial adjective in (15)).

Restriction to those nonce types that (1) recurred at a later period (i.e., inveterate or advancing) and (2) were accompanied by identifying gender carriers inevitably results in a severely reduced dataset relative to those available for the other diagnostics, but one which nevertheless proves revealing.

Table 6 calculates the number of masculine gender assignments to a noun over time, as well as an overall gender consistency score between nonce and later mentions. For those nonces displaying gender indications in Period 1, whether inveterate or advancing, we find, remarkably, that the gender assigned at the very first (nonce) mention is retained at subsequent mentions. In other words, there is close to 100% gender consistency, regardless of the ultimate frequency of the form. This is nicely exemplified with the treatment of crowd (15, 17, 18), first assigned feminine gender in the 20th century.

1. (17) 20th century:

   Ça serait des menteries de vous conter qu'il y en avait pas, de sur- sur une (f) crowd de même de deux, trois-cents (20C.105.1178)

   I'd be lying if I said there weren't any, in- in a (F) crowd like that of two, three hundred.

1. (18) 21st century:

   1. a. Je continuais parce que, tu sais, sinon la (f) crowd aurait comme chié.  (21C.157.504)

      I went on, because, you know, otherwise the (f) crowd would have had a fit.

   2. b. Ah, dans la (f) crowd, ouin. (21C.151.560)

      Oh, in the (f) crowd, yeah.

   3. c. Il jouait de même en sautant sur un- une jambe dans la (f) crowd, il a faite le tour dans la (f) crowd, il courait de même dans la (f) crowd au complet.  (21C.157.321)

      He played like that while hopping on one foot through the (f) crowd, he made the rounds through the (f) crowd, he was running like that through the (f) whole crowd.

   4. d. Il montait, puis il allait sur la (f) crowd de même. (21C.157.344)

      He went up, and then he went into the (f) crowd like that.

Table 6.

Consistency in gender assignment over time

Only shot, a lone other-language item assigned masculine gender in the 20th century (19a), displays some variability in the 21st (19b, 19c), consistent with the gradual integration scenario, although at 77% feminine, it too has achieved a high level of gender consistency.

1. (19)

   1. a. J'en parle un (m) shot. (20C.081.1576)

      I'm talking a (m) whole lot.

   2. b. Souvent là, il y a du monde qui me laissent des dix piastres d’un (m) shot. (21C.173.156)

      Often there are people who leave me 10 bucks at a (f) time.

   3. c. Ça donne mal au coeur quand tu le bois juste d’une (f) shot. (21C.109.1868)

      It makes you nauseous when you drink it all in one (f) shot.

As displayed in the lower half of Table 6, there was also 100% consistency in advancing nonces that occurred in gender-neutral contexts in Period 1, but whose gender consistency could be assessed as of Period 2. The one exception, shown in (20), appears to be semantically motivated. The token of drop assigned masculine gender (20a) refers to a snowboard move, whereas those assigned feminine (20b to 20d) all refer to a type of baseball pitch.

1. (20)

   1. a. Descends puis tu fais un (m) drop là. Tu fais juste sauter.  (21C.153.597)

      Go down and make a (m) drop (=snowboard move). You just have to jump.

   2. b. Sur la (f) drop tu tournes d'une autre manière.  (21C.105.328)

      On the (f) drop (=baseball pitch), you turn in a different way.

   3. c. Admettons une curve, ou une (f) drop, ou une euh- moi j'en connais juste trois là. (21C.105.321)

      Let's say a curve, or a (f) drop, or, uh, I only know of three.

   4. d. La curve quand ça curve, la (f) drop, quand ça drope, puis euh la change-up. (21C.105.323)

      The curve when it curves, the (f) drop when it drops, and the change-up.

With only two exceptions, then, results on this diagnostic again provide strong support for abrupt integration of nonce types into French grammar, through consistent agreement with the gender first assigned to the nonce form over time. This degree of gender consistency is particularly remarkable in view of the gender variability documented for unmixed French (Klapka, Reference Klapka2002), as in (21).

1. (21)

   1. a. Prendre une (f) bière avec les gars. (20C.076.315)

      Grab a (f) beer with the guys.

   2. b. Bien, des fois, c'est pareil comme prendre un (m) bière, fumer un joint, tu sais? (20C.076.1134)

      Well, sometimes, it's like having a (m) beer, smoking a joint, you know?

Evaluation of the graduality assumption

In this section, we have traced the development of specific lexical items from the time of their introduction as nonce forms over 61 years of real time. Taking as a measure of an item's integration its co-occurrence with grammatical elements typically associated with recipient-language grammar, we found no evidence that these items were integrated gradually. On the contrary, lone other-language items assumed French grammatical structure while still at the nonce stage. Even where rates of integration did not reach the 100% displayed by say, English-origin verbs, patterns of integration of the same nonce items at a later period were virtually always already visible in the earlier period. Thus the distribution of overt and null determiner expression on all lone other-language items always coincides with that of French; plural marking is 99.8% compatible with that of French; and even later gender assignments are consistent with those first assigned to all types for which this could be measured but one. With only one clear exception, nonce lone other-language items assume French grammatical structure at their first mention.

This suggests that when speakers access a lone other-language item, they make an instantaneous decision about whether to treat it as a borrowing or a code-switch. If they opt to borrow it, they produce it with all the requisite recipient-language morphosyntactic trappings, variability included, independent of considerations of frequency, diffusion, or listedness. What if they opt to code-switch? Based on the criterion of retaining donor-language grammar, speakers apparently do not avail themselves of this option with respect to lone other-language items. Of the 601 tokens of unambiguous nonce lone other-language items studied diachronically, only one could qualify as a code-switch (wieners in (10)). In other words, lone other-language items tend to be borrowed, and borrowings are introduced already as borrowings, even if the vast majority of them will not go on to become bona fide loanwords.

Lexical constitution of mixing strategies

We begin by considering the lexical constitution of the three mixing strategies.

Figure 4 charts their distribution across grammatical categories, with content words clustered at the left, and function words at the right. Both nonce items (the white bars) and more frequent items (the pale gray bar) are almost entirely content words. The odd function word that does occur among the lone other-language items is used meta-linguistically, as in (23).

1. (23)

   1. a. Je parlais de- d'une fille puis au lieu de dire she (pro), je disais he (pro). (20C.105.2305)

      I was talking about a girl and instead of saying “she,” I would say “he.”

   2. b. Il dit “C'est dur pour nous-autres le, la, les”, vois-tu, eux-autres c'est rien que ‘the’ (art).  (20C.105.2270)

      He says “it's hard for us, le, la, les,” you see, for them it's just the.

Figure 4.

Distribution of English words by part of speech. Here, and in subsequent figures, CS = code-switch.

Words within multiword code-switches, however, show no restriction as to part of speech. Half of them are function words. Pronouns, for example, make up 20% of multiword code-switches to English, but are never used alone, surrounded entirely by French. Even content words are distributed differently across the two mixing strategies. Although nouns account for up to two-thirds of all lone other-language items, which is consistent both with the well-documented preference for borrowing nouns (e.g., Haugen, Reference Haugen1950; Muysken, Reference Muysken, Highfield and Valdman1981; Whitney, Reference Whitney1881) and their preponderance in nonce-formations more generally (Hohenhaus, Reference Hohenhaus, Stekauer and Lieber2005, Reference Hohenhaus and Munat2007; Lipka Reference Lipka1994), they make up only 14% of multiword segments. And this distribution is not a quirk of this corpus, but, as shown in Figure 5, remains stable over time. This is the canonical lexical constitution of mixing strategies. If nonce items originate as code-switches, these discrepancies remain unexplained.

Figure 5.

Distribution of nonce lone other-language items by part of speech: 19th, 20th and 21st-century corpora.

On the other hand, under the hypothesis that nonce forms are not code-switches but borrowings, the discrepancy in distribution by part of speech is due to the fact that code-switches are fragments drawn unaltered from a donor language and are therefore governed by the grammar of that language. Consistent with this scenario, the English-origin words contained within them are distributed in the same way as those in unmixed English, represented in Figure 4 by the black bar.Footnote ⁶ On the other hand, the distribution of the lone other-language items, whether nonce or more frequent, resembles neither that of code-switches nor of unmixed English. Rather, even in the early stages, English-origin nonce items pattern with their more frequent counterparts, and both are readily distinguishable from multiword code-switches.

Linguistic integration

We now examine the linguistic treatment the same speaker accords each of her language-mixing strategies, revisiting the same diagnostics we examined with respect to the graduality assumption, and introducing a new one, adjective placement.Footnote ⁷ The logic of our argument is this: If nonce borrowings are indistinguishable from code-switches, speakers should treat their own nonce tokens of English no differently on each of these measures from the way they treat the corresponding English words contained in their multiword fragments of English. On the other hand, if borrowing lone other-language items is essentially different from code-switching multiword fragments, the former should behave just like the attested loanwords contained within the category of more frequent items.

Verb inflection

Figure 6 compares verbal morphology across the three categories of other-language verbs. It lends no support to the identity assumption. Instead, both nonce and more frequent lone other-language items conform to French morphological rules. By contrast, within multiword fragments of English, only English grammar is operative. On the measure of verb morphology then, speakers do not treat their single-word incorporations the same way they treat code-switches.

Figure 6.

Language of affix on verbs in three language-mixing categories (n = 721).

Plural marking

We saw earlier that semantically plural nonce lone other-language items virtually always feature the French null plural affix. How do they compare with the other mixing strategies?

Figure 7 shows remarkable parallels between both sets of lone other-language items, nonce and more frequent. Almost all of them are rendered with the French phonetically null marker, whereas those occurring within code-switches almost always occur with an appropriate English marker. In each case, there are a few outliers, however. For the nonce forms, we already saw that most involved false plurals of the type illustrated in (9); the same is true of the more frequent lone other-language items (24).

1. (24)

   1. a. Tu remets tes jeans [z], tu t'en vas. (20C.086.947)

      You put your jeans back on, you go.

   2. b. Moi j'avais des culottes britches [z]. (20C.080.251)

      I had a pair of britches pants.

   3. c. Puis dans chambre, bien là les shorts [s] tu changeais, n'importe quoi. (20C.080.2358)

      And in the room, well, you changed your shorts there, whatever.

Figure 7.

Marks on plural nouns in three language-mixing categories (n = 173).

There is also a small component of phonetic variability, illustrated with the lone other-language item short(s) in (25). Such alternate realizations can only be phonetic, because there is no singular form with this meaning. Parenthetically, the same kind of phonetic variability also accounts for the 75% rate of overt plural marking in these speakers’ multiword code-switches to English (26), where (in an ideal prescriptive world) we might have expected 100%.

1. (25)

   1. a. Ça fait assez longtemps j'ai pas lavé de shorts [Ø]. (20C.112.732)

      I haven't washed any shorts for a long time.

   2. b. En petites shorts [s] mettons, ou je sais pas quoi là, tu sais? (20C.028.98)

      In little shorts, say, or whatever, you know?

1. (26)

   1. a. Je vas voir la fille, je dis “You got two tickets [Ø]for Ottawa?” (20C.105.3294)

      I go see the girl, I say, “you got two tickets for Ottawa?”

   2. b. That guy won't stay in power at least for six or eight months [s]. (20C.080.587)

When calculations of marking rates are restricted to cases where [s] actually has a grammatical function, we find (Figure 8) that for both sets of lone other-language items, nonce and more frequent, integration into French reaches at least 98%.

Figure 8.

Plural marks on plural nouns in three language-mixing categories.

Only in two cases, one a nonce form (10), the other a more frequent lone other-language item (27), did an overt [s] on a lone English-origin noun function as a plural marker, as do their counterparts in multiword code-switches. Based on the criterion of retention of donor-language grammar, these are code-switches (at the equivalence site between determiner and noun). By the same criterion, the remaining lone other-language items are not.

1. (27) Cinq-cents piasses par trois jours, avec tes tips [s].  (20C.086.320)

   Five hundred bucks every three days, with your tips.

Determiner realization

Because, as previously noted, English admits many more null determiners than French does, the identity assumption would require that this disproportion be evident in nonce items and code-switches as well.

Figure 9 shows that nearly all of the more frequent lone other-language items do feature an overt determiner, as expected if they were being treated as French. The moderately lower rate of overt determiners on nonce nouns would appear to lend some support to the identity assumption, were it not for the fact that these all occurred in contexts where determiner absence is legal in French. The same is true of their more frequent counterparts, as illustrated in (28). Indeed, all 183 English-origin nominals with a null determiner occurred in one of these legal contexts!

1. (28)

   1. a. C'est de se promener en Ø bikini en bicycle sur les rues. (20C.091.1228)

      It's riding around on a bike in a bikini in the streets.

   2. b. Il a mangé un coup de Ø bat dans le front.  (20C.077.1332)

      He got bashed in the forehead with a bat.

   3. c. Moi, papa était Ø contracteur. (20C.082.926)

      ‘My dad was a contractor.

   4. d. Moi je suis bien Ø chum avec lui. (20C.079.2165)

      I'm very friendly with him.

Figure 9.

Determiner usage on nouns in three language-mixing categories (n = 3676).

Once the structural facts are taken into account (Figure 10), it is plain that all lone other-language items, whether nonce or more frequent, are made to conform to the grammar of French, with no distinction between them, whereas nouns in multiword code-switches are treated as English.

Figure 10.

Percentage of determiner usage consistent with patterns of French and English.

Adjective placement

In English, adjectives precede their head, whereas in French, they canonically follow. As with null and overt determiners, however, the conflict is only partial, because the English order is also possible in French, albeit heavily restricted lexically. Under the identity assumption, nouns contained in multiword code-switches to English should contain only adjectives consistent with English word order (preposed), and the same should be true of English-origin nouns occurring as nonce items.

Comparison of adjective placement patterns in all three sets of English words (Figure 11) shows that nouns in multiword code-switches are in fact always preceded by their modifying adjectives, as illustrated in (29).

1. (29) Qu'est-ce qu'ils appellent un free-lance politician. (20C.082.1932)

   What they call a free-lance politician.

Figure 11.

Placement of adjectives with respect to nouns in three language-mixing categories (n = 300).

But over half the nonce forms, and perhaps more surprisingly, the large majority of the more frequent lone items (87%) are as well. Closer inspection reveals that here again, every one of the apparently anomalous tokens involves the small class of adjectives admitting (if not requiring) preposition in French. Adjectives belonging to the preposable class, illustrated in (30), are always preposed, whereas those belonging to the postposable class are always postposed (31).

1. (30)

   1. a. Ah oui, les professeurs là, une vraie gang de fous là-dedans. (20C.085.161)

      Oh yeah, the profs, a real bunch of crazies in there.

   2. b. C'est juste s'assir en-avant de sa mautadite tivi toute la journée.  (20C.100.753)

      It's just sitting in front of the darn TV all day long.

1. (31)

   1. a. Puis moi j'ai mon bar favori en bas de la côte. (20C.073.125)

      And I have my favourite bar at the bottom of the hill.

   2. b. C'est deux records anglais qu'elle a reçus là. (20C.186.814)

      Those are two English [vinyl] records that she got.

On this diagnostic as well, speakers’ treatment of lone other-language items, whether nonce or more frequent, is always dictated by the grammar of French and always differs from that of English words contained within code-switches (Figure 12).

Figure 12.

Percentage of adjective placement consistent with patterns of French and English.

Consistency in gender marking

The final conflict site to be analyzed synchronically involves grammatical gender. English supplies no indications as to gender, and English nouns contained in code-switches to English show none either. Thus, if the identity assumption were correct, consistent gender assignments would only be expected in the category of more frequent lone other-language items—if at all.

We could not test this assumption by comparing nonce tokens to more frequent lone other-language items, because nonce forms are by definition nonrecurrent, and consistency can only be assessed on the basis of two or more occurrences. Therefore, we compared gender assignments in more frequent lone other-language items to those of idiosyncratic lone other-language items, defined (Poplack, Sankoff, & Miller, Reference Poplack, Sankoff and Miller1988) as lone other-language items uttered at least twice, but only by a single speaker.

Table 7 charts consistency levels in the idiosyncratic lone other-language lexical types with overt indications of gender. Nearly all (96%) show 100% consistency. Another type (diamond drill) displays a lesser, but still extremely high consistency rate of 80% (32). The one apparently truly variable type has two mentions (33). In short, idiosyncratic lone other-language items, from the time of their second mention, are consistently assigned the same gender.

1. (32)

   1. a. Il dit, “j'envoie la (f) diamond drill là”. (20C.082.392)

      He says, “I'm sending the (f) diamond drill now.”

   2. b. Demain la drill, la- la (f) diamond drill s'en vient. (20C.082.403)

      Tomorrow the (f) drill—the (f) diamond drill is coming.

   3. c. Mais il y avait la (f) diamond drill d'arrivée (20C.082.413)

      But there was the (f) diamond drill that had come.

   4. d. J'ai dit, “Écoutez mes vieux, prenez une (f) diamond drill, faites quelque chose!” (20C.082.2535)

      I said, “listen, guys, take a (f) diamond drill, do something!”

   5. e. Bien, c'est ça qu'on veut prouver avec le (m) diamond drill. (20C.082.319)

      Well, that's what we're trying to prove with the (m) diamond drill.

1. (33) Il faisait rien à son (m) barbershop. Puis il avait une (f) belle (f) barbershop. (20C.095.944)

   He didn't do a thing at his (m) barbershop. And he had a (f) nice (f) barbershop.

Table 7.

Consistency in gender assignment to idiosyncratic other-language items

In comparison, their polar opposites, the 43 widespread (10+ speakers, 10+ tokens [Poplack, Sankoff, & Miller, Reference Poplack, Sankoff and Miller1988]) types, display a somewhat lesser, though still very high rate of gender consistency: 81% are categorically marked for the same gender (Table 8). All but two of the others have a consistency level of close to 90%. Only one widespread type (baseball) is truly variable—half of its 22 tokens are assigned feminine gender, and the other half masculine, with no discernible change in meaning.

Table 8.

Consistency in gender assignment to widespread other-language items

Note: ^a Due to rounding.

The fact that the more frequent lone other-language items display slightly less gender consistency does not impeach the level of consistency achieved by idiosyncratic nonce types. If anything, the result requiring explanation is the extraordinary amount of gender agreement altogether, given such a robust precedent for gender variability in unmixed French (21). The answer must reside in the nature of nonce or near-nonce formations. It is simply easier to achieve consistency (on anything) between two tokens than among 217 (shop), and within a single speaker (although cf. example (33)), as opposed to many.

Taken together, these results confirm that gender is all but fixed at the (near-) nonce stage. As the grammar of English (which gives rise to code-switches) provides no instruction in this regard, speakers can only be drawing on the grammar of French. On this measure once again, then, nonce borrowings are clearly distinguishable from code-switches.

Speaker propensity to produce multiword code-switches and nonce lone other-language items

The foregoing analyses suggest that whatever difficulties analysts may experience in teasing code-switches apart from (nonce) borrowings, these are manifestly not shared by bilingual speakers. This should allay any doubts as to the psychological reality of these two strategies. In this section, we show that the strategies are also differentiated socially. Which speakers code-switch and which ones nonce borrow? If single-word nonce borrowing (22a) can be equated with multiword code-switching (22c), those who make copious use of one should be equally likely to use the other. Figure 13 plots the relative propensity to code-switch (calculated for each speaker from raw numbers of multiword switches per recording) and nonce-borrow (based on the proportion nonce lone other-language items represent of their borrowed types).Footnote ⁸ It shows that the two strategies are clearly not correlated.

Figure 13.

Speaker propensity to produce multiword code-switches and nonce lone other-language items. Propensity to CS: occasional = 0–3 (28 speakers, 25% of sample); moderate = 4–17 (58 speakers, 50% of sample); copious = 18–132 (30 speakers, 26% of sample). Propensity to nonce borrow: occasional = 0%–6% (34 speakers, 28% of sample), moderate = 7%–13% (56 speakers, 47% of sample), copious = 14%–39% (30 speakers, 25% of sample).

We do observe an increase in copious nonce use (the black bar) as we progress from occasional to copious switchers. But the same correlation obtains for occasional nonce users (the white bar), where the inverse would be expected. Thus copious code-switchers are as likely to be occasional as copious (nonce) borrowers, whereas occasional switchers are least likely to be occasional borrowers—or copious ones, for that matter. In other words, there is no difference between sparse and copious nonce borrowers in terms of their propensity to switch. Given that both strategies require active recourse to the other language (i.e., a certain degree of bilingual proficiency), this result is inexplicable under the assumption that code-switching is equivalent to (nonce) borrowing. On the contrary, these are alternative, not correlated strategies.

Evaluation of the identity assumption

This section considered the assumption that at any synchronic moment in time, single-word code-switches cannot be distinguished from nonce borrowings. Operationally defining nonce items as unattested lone other-language items uttered once by exactly one speaker, more frequent lone other-language items as those occurring twice or more, and code-switches as multiword fragments of the donor language, we examined how the same speakers treat other-language items in each of these categories. Our hypothesis: If the recipient-language grammar could be shown to be operating, the other-language item could be assumed to have been borrowed. If the donor-language was operating, then the other-language item was switched. To test it, we revisited the diagnostics we saw earlier to be straightforwardly associated with one or the other of the languages in contact. On none of them could the identity assumption be confirmed. Instead, in all areas but their overall frequency and distribution, lone other-language items, both nonce and more frequent, always differ from multiword code-switches: in their constitution, in speaker propensity to use them, and in their linguistic behavior, where discernible. With only two exceptions among the 7265 tokens examined in this section, this behavior is always dictated by recipient-language, not donor-language grammar.