Emergence of a Bilingual Grammar: Word Order Differences in Monolingual Basque vs. Bilingual Basque-Spanish Predicative Constructions

This article compares the monolingual Basque predicative constructions with bilingual Basque-Spanish predicative constructions. The speech data for the study were collected in the Greater Bilbao area of the Basque Country between 2005 and 2012. The results suggest that code-switching may trigger the convergence of predicative constructions and have a significant impact on the general word order patterns. The monolingual predicative constructions in the data mostly follow the canonical Basque sxv word order (~81%), but the bilingual predicative constructions diverge from this word order in that the predicative element is located in a post-verbal position, as in Spanish (~80%). The Spanish lexical elements seem to be strongly associated with the corresponding Spanish construction, the word order of which is then applied to otherwise Basque predicative constructions. I explain the predominance of the Spanish word order in the bilingual constructions by a combination of processing-related factors and sociolinguistic factors.