Linguistic characteristics of bimodal bilingual code-blending: Evidence from acceptability judgments

• Lillo-Martin, Diane ^[1] ; Gagne, Deanna ^[2] ; Avino, Melissa ^[2] ; Bobaljik, Jonathan D. ^[3] ; Wurmbrand, Susanne ^[4] ; Quadros, Ronice Müller de ^[5] ; Keller, Grace ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Connecticut

     University of Connecticut

     Town of Mansfield, Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] Gallaudet University

     Gallaudet University

     Estados Unidos

     
  3. [3] Harvard University

     Harvard University

     City of Cambridge, Estados Unidos

     
  4. [4] University of Salzburg

     University of Salzburg

     Salzburg, Austria

     
  5. [5] Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

     Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

     Brasil

     

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• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 29, Nº 2, 2026, págs. 322-335
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1017/s1366728925000409
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Code-blending is the simultaneous expression of utterances using both a sign language and a spoken language. We expect that like code-switching, code-blending is linguistically constrained and thus we investigate two hypothesized constraints using an acceptability judgment task. Participants rated the acceptability of code-blended utterances designed to be consistent or inconsistent with these hypothesized constraints. We find strong support for the proposed constraint that each modality of code-blended utterances contributes content to a single proposition. We also find support for the proposed constraint that – at least for American Sign Language (ASL) and English – code-blended utterances make use of a single derivation which is realized using surface forms in the two languages, rather than two simultaneous derivations, one for each language. While this study was limited to ASL/English code-blending and further investigation is needed, we hope that this novel study will encourage future research comparing linguistic constraints on code-blending and code-switching.

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