Code-switching and borrowing in the English of Finnish Americans in an interview setting

It is suggested that code-switching and borrowing in the English of Finnish Americans can only be described in terms of a holistic framework which incorporates various (structural) linguistic, psycholinguistic and pragmatic (functional) factors. The major premise for the description is the idea that code-switching and borrowing are to be regarded as points on a gradient running form code-changes to fully integrated loans, not as independent processes. The first proposal, that code-switching and borrowing should be described holistically, is assessed on the basis of a general theory of code-switching theory. The empirical data elicited from the non-fluent, Finnish-dominant, speakers of English is not incompatible with the proposal. The second proposal, that code-switching and borrowing are gradient phenomena, is assessed partly on the basis of cross-linguistic evidence and partly on the basis of the empirical data in the interlanguage framework. The findings of the empirical study also show that the Finnish-origin incorporations into English discourse are mostly non-smooth single-word (noun) switches rather than smooth switches attested in Spanish-English bilingual communities like New York Puerto Rican. This suggests that Finnish-English non-fluent bilinguals favour the emblematic type of code-switching which requires less knowledge of the two grammatical systems as opposed to some balanced bilingual communities where frequent intra-sentential switching of larger constituents may be regarded as a verbal skill and a sensitive indicator of degree of bilingual competence.