Aspects of the Syntax, the Pragmatics, and the Production of Code-Switching : Cantonese and English

For decades, linguists have treated code-switching as a « special language of its own, and devised many constraints accounting for code-switching patterns in various language pairs.

This book argues that code-switching is governed by the same constraints as those governing native « pure languages, and hence code-switching data provide a « window to our language faculty.

Although some other works have already suggested that code-switching and « pure languages are governed by the same syntactic rules, this book goes a step further and explores the possibility that both are constrained by the same system in terms of syntax, production, and pragmatics.