Node-switches

Node-switches are speech (or writing) errors that are not complete code-switches of the type “Yesterday, I met the Bürgermeister von Bonn [the mayor of Bonn] and he told me that my German was really wunderbar [wonderful]”; i.e. they are not simply instances of the speaker using a complete word out of the other language. When switching nodes, the speaker switches between one FL and one L1 structure, or inside the L1 and FL structures.

That is, when node-switching takes place, an ‘incorrect’ interface is chosen and as a result the wrong phonological or syntactic structure becomes dominant in a particular respect.

The term node-switch has been coined here for three reasons: first, it is phonologically close to the term “switching”. Because node-switching is a ‘sub-form’ of code-switching, this acoustic proximity and the priming of information that is related to ‘code-switching’ is intended. Second, the term “node” emphasises the network structure which underlies the language capacity. Since in node-switches the wrong interface becomes dominant, it can be seen as a ‘bad connection’ inside the network. Third, the inverted term

“switching node” defines a point at which two different objects are connected, and this, in a very special way, is also what takes place in node-switching.

This can be demonstrated using a few examples. In a sentence written by a German-English bilingual speaker such as I laughed because the joke funny was, the language chosen in the conceptual structure is English, and the activated and executed phonological structure is realised in the target language. In English syntax, however, the word order in a declarative sentence always places the verb in the second position: subject – verb – object. This word order is also relevant for subordinate clauses that depend on a main clause: This is the man who visits me often. German, on the other hand, is a language in which the verb takes the last position in a subordinate clause if that clause begins with certain conjunctions (da [=since], während [=while], weil [=because], damit [=so that], ob [=whether], etc.) or in relative clauses: Dies ist der Mann, der mich oft besucht [This is the

man who me often visits. (=who visits me often)]. In the example of a German-English bilingual utterance given above, the conjunction because activated the syntactic rules of the German counterpart weil.

English syntactic structure: PP[because (SVA)]: because the joke was funny German syntactic structure: PP[weil (SAV)]: weil der Witz lustig war

-> English phonology + German syntax: I laughed, because the joke funny was.

These types of errors are an indicator of the parallel activation of linguistic items and linguistic rules in L1 and FL (see also Grosjean 2008: 13). If FL speakers are looking for an item they need in the conversation, or if FL hearers try to interpret the input, they first check the items with a high activation level (Croft 2006: 345). If they do not find an appropriate item, they are forced to check the less activated levels, “even if that means mixing language systems” (Sharwood Smith 2007: 10). In the example above, which was taken from an essay written by a German student of English philology, the error could be due either to working memory overload (Baddeley 2007: 190, 2009c: 46) or to the influence of the academic setting, which demands high-standard language. The latter would result from the various and complex decisions that must be made in linguistic processing (Grosjean 1982: 132 ff.): the conceptual system not only has to activate the semantically correct phonological elements, but it must also choose the situationally adequate element. In purely conversational German, the conjunction weil can be followed directly by the verb, as is the case in English syntactic structure: Ich lachte, weil der Witz war lustig (= I laughed, because the joke was funny). However, in ‘high-standard’ German, and especially in the written form, this word order is seen as a sign of low-standard.

Because the German syntactic formation rules ‘know’ this connotation of the word order, and because the conceptual structure gives the direction that the style of the paper is to be in high-standard because it is academic, the correct English syntactic structure of the sentence is blocked and the German syntactic structure is chosen instead. Here, the usage of the (incorrect) German syntactic structure is the result of an internal, unconscious strategy of making the language style-appropriate (Hyland 2004: 216).

Fig. 2.4 Syntactic node-switch

Figure 2.4 illustrates how node-switching takes place. The illustration is greatly simplified and only includes the interface activations that are crucial for the production of the syntactic node-switch. First, the conceptual structure determines that the text to be produced must be written in English and that it is academic in nature. For these reasons, it denotes the FL Phonological Structure and FL Syntactic Structure as the dominant ones and conveys the information that the words and the syntactic structure to be chosen should be high-standard. In the example above, the need for a causal clause to introduce evidence prompts the Semantic Structure to activate the lexicon entry /because/. The activated FL syntactic formation rules of this entry stipulate that because requires a NP with the standard word order; that is, the verb must take the second position in the phrase. At the same time, the (active) L1 syntactic formation rules choose the high-standard syntactic rule, which indicates that the verb-second position is prohibited. This information interferes with the FL Syntactic Structure. In the example, the L1 syntactic structure overrules the correct verb-second position. It transfers its word order to the FL Phonological Structure, which generates the phonological formation of the words to be produced in the linear order that the L1 structure demands. The sentence to be written is thus generated in a syntactically incorrect – that is a German – way.

In a simple sentence such as He laughed because the joke funny was, the consequence of a syntactic node-switch is semantically negligible. For English monolinguals, understanding the sentence becomes more difficult, but they will still likely succeed in perceiving the intended message. If the syntactic structure is more complex, however, and if the underlying conceptual structure contains more complex information,

the monolingual’s ability to understand the sentence can be seriously compromised. As an example, see the following sentence:

(1) Different concepts of language that were to ensue accounted differently for the character of the non-verbal items that words were to stand for and the relation they subscribed to exist between the two relata.

The example is taken from a German student’s paper and was judged to be nonsensical by an American professor. For German-English bilinguals, on the other hand, the syntactic structure may sound clumsy – depending on their own language proficiency – but the intended meaning of the sentence is nevertheless graspable. This is as follows:

(2) Different concepts of language ensued. Each of them accounted for the character of the non-verbal items that the words stand for, as well as for the relation that they subscribed to exist between the two relata.

Or to put it even more simply:

(3) Different concepts of how language works developed. Each of them included different ideas about how language mirrors the ‘real world’.

To be sure, in sentence (1) it is not only the syntax that makes understanding difficult. The choice of words is also rather awkward; yet it is the node-switching in the syntactic structure that makes the sentence unintelligible to the English monolingual. Among other things, the sentence is rather long and nested, which is how many German academics think it should be in academic writing. That is, this node-switch is supported by this specific demand on the academic syntax (Clyne 1987: 213; see Chapter 2.4.2).

Another, more concrete syntactic node-switch is the syntactic structure of the VP to account for. In English, the subordinate PP should not be separated too widely from the verb, and if a second subordinate phrase of the verb follows, the preposition should be taken up again. In German, the native and dominant language of the writer in this example, it is normal to separate a verb from its subordinate PP. The division of the verb from the second dependent prepositional phrase (the relation they subscribed to exist between the two relata) in sentence (1), with no additional for marking it as a PP belonging to account, makes understanding the intended meaning difficult for a monolingual English reader.

Such a reader will instead understand the phrase as belonging to the relative clause [of the non-verbal items] that words were to stand for. However, the semantic information which is then generated by this interaction of syntactic and phonological structures with the conceptual structure will make the reader misunderstand the intended meaning. Together with the complex syntax of the sentence as a whole, the intended meaning becomes

In a German-English bilingual, the phonological structure of the sentence activates the English as well as the German syntactic structure in the Parallel Architecture (although the activation of the German syntactic structure is at first weaker than that of the English syntactic structure; Green 2008: 34). Since the English syntactic structure does not provide the “correct” form for transferring the phonological to the conceptual structure, the activation of the German syntactic structure becomes stronger, and in that way becomes responsible for the correct reception of the sentence. The missing preposition for would not be an omission in German syntax, and therefore the German reader understands the meaning correctly.

Since FL and L1 phonological and syntactic structures are linked to the conceptual structure via the interfaces, different types of node-switches can occur. The speaker may use the correct FL syntactic structure for the message generated in the conceptual structure, but may use the L1 phonological formation rules in generating the phonological structure.

This can happen, for example, if the speaker has to read a line aloud and does not know how to pronounce one of the words, or if they learned an FL word from a book and generated their own pronunciation using their L1 phonological formation rules. An example for this could be the word war, the orthographic form of which exists both in German and in English. In German, war is pronounced /v a: r/ and means “was”. The English war is pronounced /w ɔː r/ and has a completely different semantic (and syntactic) structure. If a German FL speaker of English pronounces war as /v a: r/, the phonological node-switch has implications for the semantic structure that the hearer generates from the message they receive. If they do not know German and cannot use node-switching in order to regenerate the intended meaning, the phonological structure has no interface to any semantic or syntactic element. The hearer will not be able to build up a semantic structure that conveys meaning. For a German, on the other hand, it is also difficult to understand /v a: r/ in the intended way. For them the L1 phonological structure is directly interfaced with the semantic and syntactic structure of the German word war (Vsg./past tense/[BE]) and in consequence, different meanings are activated that either do not fit into the context, or have the potential to divert understanding in a completely different direction. Still, the interfaces between L1 and FL might help the bilingual to grasp the intended meaning in the end because they might activate – explicitly or implicitly – the orthographic representation of /v a: r/ → war which also activates the English phonological element /w ^ɔː r/ (see also Dijkstra, Roelofs and Fieuws 1995: 264, van Heuven and Dijkstra 2010: 224).

Node-switches are also possible between the L1 and FL orthographic structures (e.g. writing philosophie, using the German suffix, instead of philosophy), or between the L1/FL phonological or semantic structures and the L1/FL orthographic structures. If, for example, a German FL English writer writes extent instead of extend, one can presume that they applied the German final devoicing to English voiced word endings in the phonological structure, and because of this committed a spelling error.

Because the interfaces work two-way (Jackendoff 2002: 198 ff., 2007: 49), node-switches can occur in producing language as well as in perceiving language. As seen in the example above, the FL phonological and syntactic structures as well as the L1 phonological and syntactic structures are active when a person takes part in a conversation (Abutalebi and Green 2007: 243). When hearing an FL word that has the same pronunciation as an L1 word with a different semantic structure, this semantic structure may be the one activated, if, for example, the hearer does not have the intended FL word in his or her lexicon. This can also happen if the FL phonological structure sounds like a one-to-one phonological translation from an L1 word. For example, the sentence I love high gables was understood by a German who was not proficient in English as ‘I love high forks’, because the rarely-used gable was unknown to him and, in trying to understand the message, he looked for a similar German word in his mental lexicon. The German word Gabel /g :a b əә l/ (=fork), which would be pronounced gable /g eɪ b əә l / using the English phonological formation structures, is activated, and with it, its syntactic and semantic structures (see Grosjean 1982: 300–306).

Chapter 4.3 will give a broader as well as more precise overview of the kinds of node-switches that can (and do) occur in written texts.

Like code-switching, node-switching can take different forms if the speaker is aware of the differences between L1 and FL rules: it can be situationally motivated and intended, it can be contextual, and it can be a performance form (Muysken 2000: 222).

Situationally-motivated phonological node-switching, for example, is used extensively in cinema in order to indicate that one of the characters is a foreigner. In films about the Second World War, German characters – and in particular fascists – are often made to pronounce their English dialogue using German phonological formation rules. This node-switching signals to the audience that this character is evil and that one should not trust him, even if he pretends to be on the good side.

Syntactic node-switching can likewise be used intentionally to convey meaning.

For example, many viewers of Star Wars believe that Yoda is using German syntactic structure in passages such as the following:

Ready, are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. (Kasdan and Brackett 1980:

www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.html[2012-06-12])

Although the performed syntactic structure is not strictly German, it does have traces of it:

the missing auxiliary do in the question What know you of ready? and the verb end position in the sentence This one a long time have I watched evoke a German impression.

Here, German has a positive connotation: it gives Yoda a wise and thoughtful aura – like Kant or Hegel – and so alludes to the once dominant position of German as the language of international academic discourse.

Most of the time, however, node-switches are not intentional. They are simply a symptom of performance errors caused by the increasing influence of L1 due to various factors – cognitive overload and the inability to reduce L1 activation, or the need to overcome a lack of language knowledge by making use of the linguistic resources in other structures (Sternberg 2009: 399). Such errors can lead to misunderstanding, but they can also help keep the conversation moving forward, because the speaker does not have to interrupt their language production to look for the correct FL form (Snellings, van Gelderen and de Glopper 2004: 175). In this way, node-switches can be both “a blessing and a curse”.

2.6 Conclusion

Many errors that occur in FL speaking or writing are the result of competition among the different language systems inside the speaker’s/writer’s brain, struggles in which a language other than the target language gains the upper hand – most often, the L1. The speaker/writer does not completely switch into the L1, but only parts of their sentences/phases/words show the L1 influence; or the writer applies genre elements of one language to the other language. These phenomena can be explained by a bilingual version of Jackendoff’s Tripartite Architecture, since many errors can be identified as switches between phonological, syntactic and orthographic structures and their rules, and between the L1 and FL registers and the semantic structure. These errors can be the result of low FL competence, of imbalances in bilingual speaking and writing, or of impairment of language, in which the linguistic structure makes use of the L1 in order to generate a

phonological output for conveying the intended meaning (Bloom and Gleitmann 2001:

886, Francis 2004: 185).

In this way, the Bilingual Tripartite Architecture can work as a compatible alternative to other bilingual language models (e.g. Dijkstra and van Heuven 2002, Francis 2004), since it makes use of findings in neuroscience (e.g. Bock 2001, Bond 2005, Cheney and Seyfarth 2005, Friederici 2006, Götze 1997, Grodzinsky 2006, Hagoort 2006, Indefrey 2007, Kim et al. 1997, Mayes 2005, Müller 2003a, 2003b, Poeppel and Hickock 2004) as well as different linguistic schools (e.g. de Bot, Lowie and Verspoer 2007, Brugman and Lakoff 1993, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Langacker 1987, 1991, Levelt 1989, 1999). In Chapters 6 and 7, it will be used in order to show how node-switches occurred in the final texts written by test subjects, and what kinds of node-switches occurred, and whether the participants had any awareness of these node-switches during the language production process – that is, whether they noticed them and tried to correct them.