Paper presented at the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF), Atlanta, Georgia.
Linguistics
Differentiation between strong and weak pronouns among bilinguals: Evidence from Spanish/English code-switching
Methods in code-switching research: The value of monolingual judgments
Age of acquisition and processing biases: An investigation of relative clause attachment in early and late bilinguals
Modality in code-switching research: Evidence from Spanish/English acceptability judgment tasks
Methods in code-switching research: When does modality matter?
Categorizing Spanish pronouns: Evidence from code-switching
A look into the early bilingual’s processor: Evidence from relative clause attachment
Methodological considerations in code-switching research
Co-authored article published in Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.
This article addresses methodological concerns in research on grammatical aspects of code-switching. Data from code-switching have the potential for a unique contribution to linguistics by giving us access to combinations of linguistic features that may be difficult (or impossible) to observe in monolingual data. Nonetheless, the use of code-switching data for linguistic inquiry is not without issues. In this paper, we focus on three methodological questions specific to code-switching research: (i) project design, (ii) experimental procedure and (iii) participant selection. Drawing on experimental data from both published works and in-progress projects, we highlight potential solutions to each methodological challenge, concluding that several solutions are often required to mitigate the impact of confounding variables. In line with previous work (e.g. Grosjean 1998, Gullberg, Indefrey & Muysken 2009), we suggest that researchers clearly report on their methodology. Our overall goal is to contribute to a dialogue on best practices in code-switching research.
doi:10.1515/shll-2013-1143