Explaining the Diversity in Malay-English Code-Switching Patterns: The Contribution of Typological Similarity and Bilingual Optimization Strategies

Bilingual speakers often engage in code-switching, that is the use of lexical items and grammatical features from two languages one sentence. Malaysia a particularly interesting context for study code-switching because Malay-English widely practiced across formal informal situations, available literature reveals there great diversity switch patterns this language pair. One most remarkable characteristics high frequency switches function words (pronouns, modal verbs, demonstratives, etc.), which very unusual corpora. Here, we analyse structural properties have received less attention than functional analyses academic on We first summarize different types are found range sources, then analyze speech teachers English Malaysia. conclude with discussion variables can explain found, particular factors (similarity between word orders both languages, limited number inflections), bilingual optimization strategies, as well strategies neutrality efficiency.