Evaluation of the Matrix Language Hypothesis: Evidence from Chinese-English Code-switching Phenomena in Blogs

This paper investigates the morpho-syntactic features of bilingual discourse made in blog articles by Chinese students studying in English speaking countries. The identified grammatical patterns of adjective, nominal and verbal constituents with Chinese and English fused together are used to testify and evaluate the Matrix Language hypothesis, which remains the central tenet of Myers-Scotton’s (1999a, 2002) linguistic explanations for code-switching phenomena. The analysis indicates that while English adjectives and nouns are well incorporated into the grammatical configuration set up by the matrix language of Chinese, English verbs show stronger resistance to the morpho-syntax of Chinese and have immense impacts on the grammatical construction of the bilingual discourse. It is therefore argued that the Matrix Language hypothesis does not always hold to account for bilingual discourse and even in classic code-switching, the matrix language is far from the sole source for the grammatical shaping while the embedded language jointly make important contributions.