Macswan, J (1999) A minimalist appr...

Macswan, J (1999) A minimalist approach to intrasentential digest switching. New York: Garland Publishing. (329 pages)

Reviewed by means of

Terrence G. Wiley

California Polytechnic University, Pomona

As its title insinuates MacSwan's study is a rigorous linguistic work that will be of primary interest to serious scholars and graduate bookish mans This study is most deserving of its inclusion in the Garland series of Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. Despite its primary audience of those interested in linguistic aspects of digest switching, this work is also worthy of serious consideration by dint of those who are concerned with by what mode notions of linguistic deficiencies are ascribed to language minority children.

MacSwan's cogitation draws on contemporary Chomskyan theory to challenge and critique assumptions underlying popular ideas about semilingualism, bilingualism and language transfer, the relationship between languages in contact, and between community languages and standardized languages of schooling. It also identifies biases in often met with language testing practices that portray incipient bilingual children as "non-nons," that is, as semilinguals who are purported to have no language, despite the fact that these children are developmentally normal and function well in their domicile and community environments.

The central thesis of the book's six chapters is that, if it can be proven that the underlying linguistic means of independence of code switchers, i.e., bilinguals who mix sum of two units languages, is the same as that of monolinguals, " then the stigma of digest switching, together with its associated [school] tracking consequences should be indicted" (p. xxiv). The first chapter provides the basic arguments for the assumption that the underlying linguistic independent support of monolinguals and that of bilingual digest switchers is the same for the languages they speak. The fifth chapter not absents a theoretical rationale for that assumption.

The next to the first through fifth chapters are organized as standard dissertation fare. Chapter sum of two units provides a comprehensive literature review that has relevance primarily as background for MacSwan's analysis of Nahuatl and Spanish digest switching. It focuses briefly forward problems of defining bilingualism and then deals more specifically with digest switching. After a short discussion of digest switchings' social aspects, MacSwan provides a technical review of the literature onward its grammatical aspects, including a detailed summary of findings upon code switching corpora (see p 54) Literature forward language contact phenomena, including work upon borrowings and calques, and forward Creoles and Pidgins, is reviewed next. MacSwan also reviews and critiques relevant literature in syntactic theory, makes a case for the advantages of formalist approaches to the application of mind of grammar, and defends Chomsky's (1995) minimalist proposal to restrict parameters of syntactic analysis to those of the lexicon. The remainder of the chapter outlines studies related to the Nahuatl and Spanish languages.

Chapter three delineates MacSwan's dissertation's design, research questions, data collection regularitys and strategies for analysis and presentation of data. His primary question is: "What linguistic principles define digest switching boundaries within sentences?" To this he adds seven additional questions. He relied onward four consultants ranging in age from 17 to 38 MacSwan also aggregateed data by means of experiments that elicited sentences from his consultants and according to use of naturalistic observations.

Chapter four provides a detailed presentation of MacSwan's syntactic findings. The fifth chapter provides a justification for interpreting them by way of means of Chomsky's minimalist criteria. Here, MacSwan reverts to a critique of the linguistic literature in succession code switching as he espouses the approach. The chapter infers with an impressive summary of the implications of his allow findings as they relate to other studies, a detailed summary of syntactic findings, and a presentation of corroborative evidence for their grammaticality from other languages (pp 232-234)

Of particular relevance to many BRJ readers are the first and sixth chapters. Chapter common reviews and critiques the notions of prescriptivism and semilingualism, the pair intellectual traditions that ". . have the potential to harm children" (p 4) MacSwan charges that " . some researchers in bilingual education have at times played a part in promoting these false and potentially damaging ideas" (p 4) As background, he analyzes teachers' beliefs about observer code switching behavior in a sociopolitical framework and reviews literature onward schooling, propaganda, and social class. MacSwan also chronicles the tradition of prescriptivism and its association with the notion of cognitive deficits, particularly as these have been applied to digest switchers. Next, he attempts to uphold Chomsky's ( 1965) notion of ideal speaker in his idealization of linguistic means of independence and explain its relevance for his application of mind on code switching.