A sample from today’s studies:
System morphemes include infections and most function words; they are defined by the features [- thematic role receiver/assigner] and often [+ quantification]. As such, they contrast with content morphemes, which either receive thematic roles (most nouns and adjectives) or assign them (most verbs, some prepositions) thematic roles. The other language(s) participating in code switching (CS) is the Embedded Language(s) (EL).
The ML frames the projection of the complementizer (CP) which constitutes intrasentential CS. (A CP is synonymous with a clause with a complementizer (COMP) e.g., because he came late, with because as COMP). Note that COMP is often null (e.g., in a main clause) and a CP may contain many null elements.
Under the Matrix Language Frame model (MLF model), within the CP frame there can be three types of constituents, all of which are maximal projections within X-bar theory (e.g., N’, NP, PP): (1) Mixed constituents (ML + EL constituents) contain content morphemes from both the ML and the EL, but have a grammatical frame from the ML. This means that all syntactically active system morphemes come only from the ML. (2) Similarly, ML islands have an ML grammatical frame, but differ in that all morphemes come from the ML. (3) In parallel fashion, EL islands consist of only morphemes from the EL which are framed by the EL grammar.
No wonder it takes me two hours to read 20 pages of this stuff. I had no idea I’d have to learn another language (academia-speak) in this course…
