Language dominance and language nativeness: the view from English-Spanish codeswitching

Abstract

Investigating the interpretation and production of codeswitched structures involving functional and lexical categories by bilingual speakers constitutes a reliable tool to assess language dominance and/or nativeness. Language dominance has been described and measured in the context of bilingualism while nativeness is more rooted in the characterization of primary versus non-primary acquisition. Both concepts are intended to identify the specific ways in which language is represented in the mind of a bilingual. We draw from three different hypotheses formulated in the context of formal linguistics: the Grammatical Features Spell-Out Hypothesis, the Gender Double-Feature Valuation Mechanism, and the PF Interface Condition to show whether and how the codeswitching conditions established by these hypotheses constitute a diagnostic for language dominance and language nativeness.