The expression of evidentiality in French-English bilingual discourse

Abstract

This study, drawing on data from a large sociolinguistic interview corpus for three Acadian communities of Atlantic Canada, concerns codeswitches involving verbs of opinion or belief (e.g. guess, think, imagine, believe) in French-English bilingual discourse. The codeswitch itself serves to underscore the speaker's stance as to the truth of the proposition – and, in some cases, to indicate a degree of uncertainty not nuanced by corresponding French language forms. Variation in usage is related to intensity of language contact at the levels of the community and of the individual.