Being in bilingual speech

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated estar constructions in the Spanish/English code-switching variety of northern Belize, which is well known for its prolific use of hacer bilingual compound verbs in code-switched speech. To this end, we extracted and analysed 364 unilingual Spanish and 158 bilingual estar constructions from naturalistic speech in order (i) to examine the occurrence of estar with predicative adjectives, present participles, and past participles in both unilingual and code-switched discourse; and (ii) to determine how type of bilingualism (emergent versus dynamic) and frequency of use of hacer bilingual compound verbs, influence the naturalistic production of estar constructions. Results revealed that the production of estar with English predicative adjectives and English past participles was favoured in bilingual discourse. Importantly, the use of ‘estar + English past participle’ constructions was favoured by dynamic bilinguals who more frequently employed hacer ‘do’ bilingual compound verbs. Our findings highlight the important role that bilingual competence plays in the naturalistic production of congruent structures in code-switched speech.