Vietnamese-English Bilingualism - Patterns of Code-Switching by Ho-Dac Tuc

VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH
BILINGUALISM
Patterns of Code-Switching
Asian Linguistics Series
Editor-in-Chief: Walter Bisang, Mainz University
Associate Editors: R. V Dhongde, Deccan College, Pune
Masayoshi Shibatani, Kobe University
Asia is the world’s largest continent, comprising an enormous wealth of

languages, both in its present as well as in its eventful past. The series
contributes to the understanding of this linguistic variety by publishing
books from different theoretical backgrounds and different methodological
approaches, dealing with at least one Asian language. By adopting a
maximally integrative policy, the editors of the series hope to promote
theoretical discussions whose solutions may, in turn, help to overcome the
theoretical lean towards West European languages and thus provide a
deeper understanding of Asian linguistic structures and of human language
in general.
VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH BILINGUALISM
Patterns of code-switching
Ho-Dac Tuc
LINGUISTIC EPIDEMIOLOGY
Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia
Nick J. Enfield
A GRAMMAR OF MANGGHUER
A Mongolic language of China’s Qinghai-Gansu Sprachbund
Keith W. Slater
FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE(S), FORM AND INTERPRETATION

Perspectives from East Asian languages
Edited by Yen-hui Audrey Li and Andrew Simpson
VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH
BILINGUALISM
Patterns of Code-Switching
Ho-Dac Tuc
First published in 2003
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2003 Ho-Dac Tuc

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hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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ISBN 0-7007-1322-0
To my mother
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List o f figures ix
List o f tables xi
Preface xiii
Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Subjects and methodology 23
3 Patterns of code-switching 41
4 Tonal facilitation of code-switching 87
5 Code-switching of personal pronouns 111
6 Conclusion 135
Appendix 1: Sample questionnaire 141

Appendix 2\ List of informants 143
Appendix 3: Extracted sample interviews 145
Bibliography 155
Index 173
vii
List of figures
2.1 Distribution of Vietnam-born population in Australia 25

2.2 Local government areas - Melbourne 35
3.1 Incidence of code-switching by topics 80
3.2 Comparison of code-switching patterns by the three sub-groups 84
4.1 Pitch levels and direction of pitch movement 94
4.2 Code-switching in relation to pitch height 108
ix
List of tables
2.1 Age and sex distribution of the informants 37

2.2 Percentage of Vietnamese by age in 1986 and 1991 in Victoria,
and in this study 38
2.3 Language spoken at home by age in Victoria 39
2.4 Arrival year in Australia of sixty informants 40
3.1 Breakdown of switching by word classes 46
3.2 Nouns switched by semantic category 47
3.3 Switching by interjections in order of frequency 49
3.4 Comparison of intensifier adverbs in English and Vietnamese 66
3.5 Frequency distribution of CS by topics in the interview setting 73
3.6 Switching by word classes of the three sub-groups 81
4.1 Comparative descriptions of Vietnamese tone 90
4.2 Pitch values in Cantonese tones 91
4.3 Description of Vietnamese tone system 93
4.4 Tone relationship 97
4.5 Total number of tones at switch points 97
4.6 Distribution of tones at switch points by males and females 98
5.1 Implications of Vietnamese personal pronouns 120
xi
Preface
This book is based on a thesis presented in September 1996 for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The
degree was granted in March 1997 on the recommendation of the
examiners, Professor Suzanne Romaine of Oxford University and Dr
Thao Le of Tasmania University. I am grateful for their constructive
criticism.
My principal acknowledgement must go to Professor Michael Clyne,
Professor of Linguistics of Monash University. Professor Clyne has given
me much of his time and has supervised me in all phases of study. I have
taken advantage of his superior standards of scholarship, and count myself
privileged to have been able to work under his crucial guidance. It was he
who first introduced me to the world of language contact. His concern for
linguistics scholarship and his interest in his students have served as a
constant inspiration to me. This book could not have been possible without
his encouragement and recommendation to his colleagues in Europe for
publication.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Walter Bisang of
Institut fur Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Mainz, Germany, editor of the
RoutledgeCurzon Asian Language Series. Professor Bisang has provided
detailed comments on the Vietnamese language. He has allowed me
greatly to benefit from his knowledge of East and South East Asian
languages by freely providing copies of various papers and refining my
linguistic view of East and South East Asian languages.
Of those who have helped me over the years in preparing this book, my
especial gratitude is due to Lan Anh for her corrections of the manuscript
and careful editorial suggestions; Anja Lloyd-Smith of Monash
University for her practical help; Professor Arthur Abramson and the
editors of Journal o f Phonetics for constructive criticism on tonal aspects
in Chapter 4; Vo Van Vu for having provided me with a comfortable
computer; my wife Thuy who has assisted me greatly in numerous other
understanding ways; Van Xuan An for his varied assistance; and Nguyen
xiii
PREFACE
Van Hiep for his valued friendship. In particular, I would like to record
my thanks to Doan Do Hung, whose kindness helped to carry me through
difficult times, and Ho Dac Hai Mien for her help with indexing.
xiv
Abbreviations
ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics

BIR Bureau of Immigration and Population Research
CLA Classifier
DET Determiner
FINAL-PRT Final particle
FUNC-V Function verb
LGA Local government area
PAST Past tense
PL Plural
PRE-V Present continuous verb
PRT Particle
QUEST-PRT Question final particle
SLA Statistical local area
xv
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 INTRODUCTION
As early as the turn of the twentieth century, Ferdinand de Saussure pointed
out that it is time, rather than space, which influences language (Saussure
1959: 198). Though his remark is still true today, it does not seem to
speculate about several other factors which may affect language usage.
One such factor is the migration of people from one country to another
which leads to what we term ‘multilingual countries’. In countries such as
Australia, one may hear different languages spoken side by side by differ
ent people from all walks of life. In fact, for various reasons, from colon
isation to the provision of education at many levels of society (Milroy and
Muysken 1995), multilingualism is a widespread phenomenon in most
countries. As Romaine (1995: 8) puts it: ‘From a global societal perspective,
of course, most of the world’s speech communities use more than one
language and are therefore multilingual rather than homogeneous’.
Australia is an example of multilingualism where many languages are
accommodated. Contact between different languages has led to many
instances of bilingualism, including the alternate use of two or more
languages in the same conversation of the bilingual, which is known by the
general term of code-switching.
It is against this setting that the Vietnamese language, brought by
continuing waves of Vietnamese immigrants, emerges as one of the
minority languages in multilingual Australia. The language is sixth in
importance to English in terms of number of speakers throughout
Australia (Kipp, Clyne and Pauwels 1995).
More than two decades after the first boat carrying Vietnamese asylum
seekers arrived on Australia’s northern shores in early 1976, the number of
Vietnamese migrants has steadily increased (see Section 2.1). Being in a
new adopted country, the Vietnamese are confronted with a very different
environment from which they expected, by many others as well as amongst
themselves, to adjust accordingly. In contact with English as a dominant
1
IN TRO D U C TIO N
language, the Vietnamese language is by no means free of English

influence. The nature and extent of the effects of contact between English
and Vietnamese, and the linguistic behaviour of the Vietnamese in their
confrontation with an English setting, depend on various factors.
Much work focusing on a range of linguistic behaviour has been carried
out from various perspectives. Labov (1963), for instance, argues that
linguistic variation may be induced by one or two individuals. If such
variation recurs and is imitated, it may become a new form which is in
contrast with the old form. Finally, according to Labov, one or the other of
the two forms will be widespread.
Some scholars see code-switching as a type of linguistic behaviour
which can lead to the emergence of new forms. Such new forms are
different from those of both the original languages (Romaine 1986). In the
words of Romaine (1994: 56): ‘In situations of intense language contact it
is possible for a third system to emerge which shows properties not found
in either of the input languages. Thus, through the merger or convergence
of two systems, a new one can be created’.
It would be possible to add here that if code-switching can lead to the
emergence of new forms, then such new forms are indispensable because
they are a product of two languages which are an important element in the
speech of the bilingual. As such, they are the vessel which holds the other
qualities. There is no evidence to indicate that the intense contact between
Vietnamese and English will lead to the death of Vietnamese, or that
English, as used by Vietnamese-English speakers in Australia, is
becoming less uniform. However, we can speculate on how, as a result
of intense contact between two languages, they would exert influence on
each other, and could create what Romaine (1994) calls the emergence of
new forms. To use a metaphor, the intense language contact resembles the
notion of a melting pot, creating new forms (like heat, which, by melting
different metals, amalgamates them into a new homogeneous unit).
Along these lines, the suggestion that code-switching can lead to the
emergence of new forms would also imply that code-switching can create
a problem for first-generation bilinguals, who, in some cases, may not
understand their children’s switching behaviour. Such a problem has been
referred to in Clyne’s study of German-English bilinguals in Australia
(1967), and by others in subsequent studies.
In fact, in some cases, there are communicative problems between the
Vietnamese who came to Australia as adults and adolescents. Although
English is the dominant language in all spheres of public life in the
Australian context, it has gradually entered the homes of the Vietnamese
and, to some extent, exerted an influence on their domestic activities.
2
IN TRO D U C TIO N
Nowadays, if we walk into a Vietnamese home, we might see the parents

watching a video in Vietnamese while their children are watching an
English film in another part of the house; or we might hear children ask
their father to refrain from watching his Vietnamese film so that they can
see the Australian-made soap opera Home and Away. Though this may
appear to generalise a typical scenario of the Vietnamese family, it would
seem to indicate that attributing such different activities between parents
and children to language problems might be reasonable.
As far as immigrant speech is concerned, there have been numerous
studies on code-switching. Until recently, studies on code-switching over
the past two decades have generally focused on the formulation and
discussion of syntactic constraints governing code-switching (see Clyne
1987a for an overview and discussion), and on the discourse functions that
code-switching may fulfil. Many quantitative, qualitative, and comparative
studies of code-switching have been conducted. But none of them have
dealt with code-switching of Vietnamese-English bilinguals, a linguistic
phenomenon which has become common in the repertoire of their daily
speech.
Indeed, the alternate use of Vietnamese and English is to a certain
extent an integral part of the lives of Vietnamese-English bilinguals.
Although it is not always possible to make generalisations on how the
Vietnamese use different forms of code-switching, a study of their
switching behaviour may provide a better understanding of it. To this end,
this study attempts to show how the Vietnamese use code-switching in
their bilingual repertoire. It will show that apart from linguistic factors that
affect code-switching patterns, Vietnamese-English bilinguals also switch
codes due to some factors which are intimately related to various aspects
of the idiosyncrasies of their language and culture.
For practical reasons, this study concentrates on subjects residing in
three selected areas of Melbourne (see Section 2.4). It is hoped that this
study will contribute to studies of immigrant languages in the Australian
context, and it will, as Clyne suggests (1967: 2), ‘throw some light on
possible methods of teaching migrant children their “first” language’.
1.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Studies on code-switching have generally analysed data on code-switching
by working within one approach or a combination of more than one
(Lu 1991). Among several distinct approaches are the following: (1) The
structural approach posits language-specific or universal ‘constraints’
(or ‘models’) regulating code-switching patterns (e.g. Pfaff 1976; Poplack
3
IN T RO D U C TIO N
1980, 1981; Sankoff and Poplack 1981; Sankoff and Mainville 1986;
Di Sciullo et ah 1986; Myers-Scotton 1993a, 1993b). (2) The
psychological approach examines the interaction of the two grammars
involved in the process of code-switching (e.g. Macnamara 1971; Neufeld
1976; Clyne 1980; Sridhar and Sridhar 1980; Grosjean and Soares 1986).
(3) The ethnographic and communicative approach investigates the
speakers’ intention (e.g. Tay 1989; Stroud 1990). (4) The attitudinal
approach emphasises attitudes toward code-switching (Gibbons 1983,
1987; Bentahila 1983). And (5) the functional approach postulates the
conversational functions of code-switching (e.g. Auer 1981, 1984;
Gumperz 1982). It can be seen that code-switching has been studied
from various approaches and these can be grouped together in a number of
ways (Lu 1991).
In a recent study on code-switching, Muysken (1995) reiterates the
need for universal explanations when looking for grammatical constraints
on code-switching. On the other hand, Gumperz (1982) focuses on the
discourse functions and emphasises the strategic activities of bilinguals
within a framework of social values and symbols. The division of
approaches toward code-switching implicitly means that no single
approach to code-switching is likely to yield adequate results. Therefore,
it seems more appropriate to use a combination of approaches than to rely
on any single exclusive one and to show how a wide variety of approaches
complement one another (Milroy and Muysken 1995).
This study will use a combination of different approaches which can
serve as a useful framework for scrutinising code-switching data from
different angles. The data collection methods for this study include
questionnaires and recorded interviews, which will be described in
Chapter 2. The analysis is based chiefly on the collected code-switching
data.
1.3. STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

This book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 states the aims of the
study, outlines the structure of the book and reviews the literature on code
switching. Chapter 2 describes the research design, the data collection
methods (including an outline of the situation in which Vietnamese and
English came into contact in Australia), and detailed information on the
Vietnamese community in Melbourne. The third chapter outlines the
syntactic structure of the Vietnamese language and presents the
quantification of the syntactic forms in code-switching data, with a focus
on the results of the structural analysis including a discussion of the
4
IN TRO D U C TIO N
relation of social networks and topics to patterns of code-switching.

Chapter 4 shows the features of the Vietnamese tones, and discusses their
relation to code-switching. Chapter 5 describes in detail the Vietnamese
system of person reference with a view to analysing how the Vietnamese
system of person reference would induce a code-switch. Chapter 6
summarises the main findings and suggests the directions for future
research.
1.4 LITERATURE REVIEW

This section will present various ways in which code-switching has been
approached up to now, and indicate how those, studies correspond to this
research.
From a historical perspective, recent approaches and findings, with
their wealth of data and analyses of code-switching behaviour from which
various ‘models’ and ‘constraints’ have been drawn, could hardly have
been possible without influential pioneering work in the field of
bilingualism research. Although it is impossible to write about the entire
history of research on code-switching, we need to mention very briefly the
work of a number of individual scholars who have laid the essential
foundations for a range of studies on code-switching which occurred in the
following decades.
It is evident from the abundant research literature that a large number of
works in the area of bilingualism mentioned chiefly three books published
in the 1950s (i.e. Weinreich 1953; Haugen 1953, 1956) as particularly
significant pioneering works. These scholars laid the theoretical founda
tion for research into language contact. Haugen himself coins the term
‘code-switching’ to cover situations in which a bilingual introduces a
completely unassimilated word from another language into his/her speech.
On the other hand, Weinreich is rather prescriptive about code-switching
when he considered that ‘switching’ is conditioned by ‘appropriate
changes in the speech situation ... and certainly not within a single
sentence’ (1953: 73). It appears from the literature that these two scholars
rediscovered some issues which had been raised before the 1950s (e.g.
Braun 1937). For example, Weinreich (1953) introduces various issues on
bilingualism from a range of perspectives - psycholinguistic, gramma
tical and sociolinguistic - but he himself has over 650 items listed in his
references. Another early focus on the problems of bilingualism can also
be found in the report of the Fifth Annual Georgetown University Round
Table Meeting (Mueller 1954). Nevertheless, having benefited from
these early works, scholars have over the past decades sought to identify
5
IN T RO D U C TIO N
the resulting changes that arise in each language due to contact with the
other.
The literature on code-switching over the past decades appears to have
focused on two particular issues. First, there is the debate over the
formulation and discussion of syntactic constraints. Some researchers have
argued for the postulation of universal syntactic constraints that govern
code-switching. The other major issue is the investigation of discourse
functions of code-switching. In general, a range of approaches to
code-switching has led researchers to an agreement that this linguistic
phenomenon cannot be dismissed as arbitrary, and that code-switching can
be approached from different angles concurrently with one another.
1.4.1 Approaches to code-switching

While the examination of code-switching by researchers has been increasing
in the past decades, there is still a noticeable degree of confusion as to
what constitutes and accounts for examples of code-switching. Apart from
attempting to define the type of language behaviour characteristically
referred to as code-switching, researchers also further encounter the
problem of distinguishing code-switching from other linguistic phenomena,
for instance, from the closed counterpart of code-switching, ‘borrowing’
of lexical items. The problem of terminology and conceptual distinction
between linguistic phenomena are still important topics of further research
and are disputed.
As has been mentioned, the phenomenon of language switching was
developed largely by Haugen (1956) in his consideration of interlingual
contact. According to Haugen, code-switching is one of the stages in the
diffusion of language in contact. The others are integration and
interference. It remains Haugen’s view that integration refers to the
regular use of elements from one language in another, whereas
interference denotes the overlapping of two languages.
Code-switching is treated extensively by Hasselmo (1961, 1970), who
is the first to research Swedish and English contact in America. Hasselmo
(1961, 1970) points out that code-switching consists of the use of distinct
successive stretches of two languages, and, depending on the interlocutors’
degree of proficiency in both languages, the switch from one language to
another may be ‘clean’, that is, the switch involves a complete
phonological change, or ‘ragged’, that is, the change is grammatical and
lexical, but not phonological. Hasselmo (1961: 65) also reports that
switching sometimes occurs when a speaker is stuck for a word in
Swedish. Hasselmo’s (1961) thesis actually introduces a lot of the later
6
IN T RO D U C TIO N
ideas on aspects of code-switching and is a significant contribution to the

studies of code-switching.
In his research on German-English bilingualism in Australia, Clyne
(1967, 1972b) distinguishes between ‘internally’ conditioned code
switching (dependent on structural features) and ‘externally’ conditioned
code-switching (dependent on non-structural or extra-linguistic factors).
Clyne also accommodates all language contact phenomena under the term
‘transference’. His theory of ‘triggering’ will be discussed in Section
1.4.3.
From a sociolinguistic point of view, recent studies of code-switching
have approached the phenomenon from grammatical and pragmatic
perspectives (Romaine 1995). Generally, the former is studied by those
whose interest is in the linguistic level at which code-switching is defined
(Gumperz 1976; Poplack, 1977; Lipski 1978, among others). The
pragmatic perspective has been concerned with the alternate choice of
languages controlled by components such as topic, setting and
participants, and sometimes referred to as ‘situational switching’ (Blom
and Gumperz 1972; Auer 1988; Heller 1988; Myers-Scotton 1988); or
with the choice of language in which it takes place within a single
conversation without any change of major factor in the interaction,
referred to as ‘conversational code-switching’ (Gumperz 1982: 60-1).
Blom and Gumperz (1972) also introduce the notion of ‘metaphorical’
code-switching to refer to the communicative effect the speaker intends to
convey (see Gumperz 1982; Gardner-Chloros 1991 and Romaine 1995 for
a discussion of the notion of metaphorical vs transactional code
switching).
Having observed different types and degrees of code-switching within
the same conversation and within clauses, linguists distinguished two
types of code-switching: intersentential and intrasentential switching
(Poplack 1980). Broadly speaking, intersentential switching involves
switching languages at sentential boundaries. On the other hand,
intrasentential switching, which is of interest in this study, involves a
switch from one language to another in the middle of the sentence.
Examples of this type of switching have been well-documented. The title
of Poplack’s (1980) study: ‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English y
termino en español’ (Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English and finish
in Spanish) is a typical instance of intrasentential switching.
The growing number of studies on intrasentential switching with
different research interests has generated confusion as to what constitutes
code-switching. The confusion has been further exacerbated as students of
code-switching employed either the same term to describe different
7
IN T RO D U C TIO N
linguistic phenomena: code-switching and borrowing; or used different

terms (that is, code-switching and code-mixing) to describe the
phenomenon under investigation, as pointed out in Clyne (1987a). Some
scholars viewed code-switching and borrowing as distinct processes
(Poplack 1980, 1985, 1990; Boeschoten 1990; Eliasson 1989, 1990;
Muysken 1987; Sankoff et al. 1990), though consensus has yet to be
reached on which basis manifestations should be classed in which
category; while others contend that they are related processes (Bentahila
and Davies 1991; Myers-Scotton 1993b; Treffers-Daller 1991, 1994) and
should not be considered distinct entities. It is necessary at this point to
look at theoretical distinctions between code-switching and borrowing in
the literature.
Distinguishing code-switching from borrowing in terms of degree of
competence, Pfaff (1975, 1979, 1990) considers it unnecessary to
segregate language contact phenomena. Rather it is advantageous to study
their interplay. Pfaff (1979) distinguishes borrowing from code-switching
in terms of the speaker’s degree of competence: borrowing needs only
monolingual competence, whereas for a code-switch to occur, a speaker
should have bilingual competence.
In an earlier study, Reyes (1974) claims that there are two types of
borrowing: spontaneous and incorporated. In spontaneous borrowing,
there is no morphological adaptation, while morphological integration is
needed in incorporated borrowing. Code-switching, according to Reyes,
differs from borrowing in that code-switching occurs at noticeable
syntactic juncture and has its own internal syntactic structure.
In a similar distinction, Gumperz states:
Borrowing consists of the introduction of single words or short,
frozen, idiomatic phrases from one language into the other. The
items in question are incorporated into the grammatical systems of
the borrowing language. They are treated as part of its lexicon, take
on its morphological characteristics and enter into its syntactic
structure. Code switching by contrast relies on the meaningful
juxtaposition of what speakers must process as strings formed
according to the internal syntactic rules of two distinct systems.
(Gumperz, 1976: 8)
Gumperz’s definition of borrowing does not specify the degree to which
the borrowed items are integrated into the borrowing language. In
Perspectives on Language Contact, Clyne (1972a: 14) distinguishes two
major factors in relation to borrowed items within the recipient language:
‘type of integration’ including phonological, morphological, semantic and
IN T R O D U C TIO N
graphemic integration, and ‘degree of integration’ including stability of

use and integration (for a full discussion, see Clyne 1972a: 14-23).
Following Haugen (1956), whose description of code-switching
involves a string of unadapted words and phrases, some researchers
(Wentz and McClure 1977; Poplack and Sankoff 1984) rest their arbitrary
explanation of borrowing and code-switching on the level of single lexical
items as an indicator of borrowing as opposed to code-switching. Shaffer
(1978), for instance, argues that switching would ‘involve entire phrases
rather than single words. It is not without good reason that Clyne (1967:
19) referred to switching as “multiple transference’” (Shaffer 1978: 268).
Still, others such as Gumperz and Hemandez-Chavez (1975), based on
their Spanish-English data, claim that whole sentences are the most easily
borrowed, and refer to code-switching as a type of borrowing without
making a distinction between code-switching and borrowing in relation to
functions and processes. In Poplack and Sankoff (1984: 103-4, see
Romaine (1995: 156) for discussion of relationship between code
switching and borrowing), the distinctions between code-switching and
borrowing can be illustrated as follows:
Code-switching Borrowing
frequent use - +
synonym displacement - +
integration: phonological + /- +/+
morphological - +
syntactic - +
acceptability by native speakers - +
In addition to the criteria for a distinction between various effects of

language contact (here, code-switching, code-mixing and borrowing),
Myers-Scotton (1983b, 1993a) has recently developed her Matrix Language
Frame Model in an attempt to generally distinguish code-switching from
borrowing. According to Myers-Scotton, code-switching and borrowing
occur within a frame which is set by what she called a matrix language. The
matrix language refers to the language in which the majority of morphemes
in a given discourse occur in contrast to the embedded language from which
material enters a matrix language. She claims that her Matrix Language
Frame Model can distinguish which singly occurring embedded language
lexemes are borrowing from those that are code-switching.
The problem of distinction is still far from clear. As pointed out by
Clyne (1987a) who reviews the literature up to that date, a further problem
9
connected with the delineation of the concept of code-switching is the

confusion of terminologies. While some scholars make a distinction
between code-switching and borrowing (Poplack 1980; Poplack et al.
1988; among others), others use ‘code-mixing’ as an alternative term to
cover both borrowing and code-switching (Pfaff 1979; Romaine 1986) or
employ ‘code-switching’ as a neutral cover term for ‘code-mixing’ and
‘code-changing’ (Wentz and McClure 1977; McClure 1981). Singh (1985)
uses the term ‘code-switching’ for any diglossic situation where one code
is employed, and like Bokamba (1987), reserves the term ‘code-mixing’
for intrasentential switching.
To a large extent, there has been a commonly accepted definition
among scholars who define code-switching in a similar way: ‘the
juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech
belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems’ (Gumperz
1982: 59).
The type of switching mentioned above can be thought of as forming a
continuum ranging from whole sentences to single words. Apart from being
a result of different research interests, the continuum may be indicative of
the richness of different methodologies for determining code-switching. On
the other hand, it gives evidence of a confusion over the distinction between
code-switching and borrowing. For this reason, some researchers have
looked for a uniform approach towards both phenomena (e.g. Treffers-
Dallers 1990). Under this perspective, several constraints have been
proposed in the literature with an attempt to produce certain generalisations
about the nature of code-switching (see Section 1.4.3).
A brief review of the definitions of code-switching has shown that the
phenomenon under investigation is defined differently as a result of
different research interests and how researchers view the phenomenon. In
this study, code-switching is employed as ‘the alternate use of two
languages within or across sentence boundary’ (based on Weinreich 1953;
also Clyne 1987a; Heller 1988, among others). All levels of constituents
within language 1 (LI) discourse (such as morpheme, phrase, clause,
sentence) will be treated as code-switching.
The following sections will focus on the postulation of constraints that
govern code-switching.
1.4.2 Specific-language constraints on code-switching

Appel and Muysken (1987) show that before reaching the period of
universal constraints in the 1980s, most of the early code-switching studies
(mainly in America) drew on Spanish-English data and their foci were on
10
IN T RO D U C TIO N
specific constraints. In fact, apart from Haugen, it is Hasselmo (1961) who

is the first to work on Swedish-American English constraints.
In the early 1950s, recognising the phenomenon in the speech of
bilinguals, Weinreich states that ‘the ideal bilingual switches from one
language to the other according to appropriate changes in the speech
situation ... but not in an unchanged speech situation, and certainly not
within a single sentence (Weinreich 1953: 73).
Although Weinreich’s view of code-switching as ‘appropriate changes
in the speech situation’ was employed by some (Ervin-Tripp 1964a;
Ferguson 1964a; Fishman 1971), his criterion for the ‘ideal bilingual’ can
hardly explain the existence of frequent intrasentential switches that take
place within a sentence, clause and word boundary with no apparent
change in topic or interlocutors. The problem is addressed in Gumperz and
Hemandez-Chavez (1975: 155): ‘Topic, speaker, setting are common in
each case. Yet the code changes sometimes in the middle of a sentence’,
and examples of intrasentential switching are rich in many studies (Kessler
1984; Nishimura 1985; Amuda 1986; Ozog 1987; Poplack, Wheeler and
Westwood 1987; Romaine 1995).
To a large extent, the 1970s witnessed the studies of specific constraints
that were carried out by a large number of researchers (Gingras 1974;
Timm 1975; Gumperz and Hemandez-Chavez 1975; Lipski 1978; Pfaff
1979; Poplack 1981). Most of these studies were not concerned with
formulating universal constraints on code-switching. Rather, they looked
at a specific case of switching and imposed a specific constraint. Gumperz
and Hernandez-Chavez (1975), for example, note that code-switching was
possible between a head noun and a relative clause, and between a subject
and a predicate in a copular construction. Similarly, Timm (1975) proposes
five constraints on intrasentential Spanish-English code-switching but she
does not provide any examples from other language pairs that would
confirm her constraints. Furthermore, counter-examples to this claim have
been provided by Pfaff (1979) and Poplack (1981) in their Spanish-English
data. Evidence against proposed constraints on code-switching challenged
researchers to devise further several constraints which were expected to be
more universally applicable to a very wide range of language pairs.
Thus, it has been recognised that the formulated models are applicable
to specific code-switching data and fail to explain the phenomena that
occur among diverse language pairs. Nevertheless, despite the lack of an
overall theoretical perspective and the existence of basic implicit
assumptions that are pointed out and challenged by Appel and Muysken
(1987) and Clyne (1987a), this early research to a certain extent stimulated
later studies which led to general theoretical constraints on code-switching.
11
IN TRO D U C TIO N
1.4.3 Universal constraints on code-switching

One of the most important orientations to recent studies on code-switching
is that scholars have proceeded from language-specific constraints (e.g.
Timm 1975; Gumperz 1976; Pfaff 1979) to the formulation of more
general constraints, such as Poplack’s (1980) Free Morpheme Constraint
and Equivalence Constraint, and Myers-Scotton’s (1993a) Markedness
Model (see below).
The formulation of more general constraints on code-switching is
attempted to account for switching by word classes as a whole, and in
particular. For example, in dealing with the switching of pronouns, some
approaches to code-switching of pronouns attempt to determine at what
points in a sentence pronouns are code-switched. The investigation of
pronouns in intrasentential code-switching has been well-documented in
the code-switching literature (Sankoff and Poplack 1981; Bentahila and
Davies 1983; Woolford 1983). As early as the 1970s, scholars have
observed that code-switching between verbs and their pronouns does not
occur (Timm 1975; Lipski 1978; Pfaff 1979). More recently, attempts have
been made to establish some general principles which could account for
the phenomenon of switched pronouns (Eid 1992; Azuma 1993; Jake
1994). In her study of Arabic-English codeswitching, Eid (1992: 59-62)
reports what she calls the phenomenon of ‘pronoun doubling’. She notes
that the subject pronoun from Arabic is followed by the subject pronoun
from English and then followed by an English predicate. Her examples are
given in examples (a), (b), and (c):
(a) Fa hiyya PSYCHOLOGICALLY SHE’S IN EGYPT.
‘so she’ ...
(b) Wi ba den ’ihna WE’RE REALLY STRUGGLING.
‘and then we’ ...
(c) Yani ana I WAS REALLY LUCKY
‘meaning I’ ...
(Eid 1992: 59)
Eid observes that doubling occurs when the subject pronoun is from
Arabic and the predicate is from English. She reports that there is no
instance in which an English subject pronoun is repeated in Arabic and
then followed by an Arabic predicate. In their study of code-switching
between Arabic and French, Bentahila and Davies (1983) also report that
an Arabic pronoun is repeated in a French clitic pronoun and then followed
by a French predicate. Thus, there is similar observation in both Bentahila
12
IN T RO D U C TIO N
and Davies’s (1983) and Eid’s (1992) study. A subject pronoun in LI

(Arabic) is repeated in L2 (French or English), and the pronoun in L2 is
followed by a predicate in L2. There is no case in which a L2 subject
pronoun is repeated in Arabic and followed by an Arabic predicate.
These authors attempt to account for the code-switching of pronouns in
different ways. Bentahila and Davies (1983) argue that a subject pronoun
in French is obligatory in sentences containing no other overt subject
constituent, and is cliticised to the verb. In Arabic, according to Bentahila
and Davies, a subject pronoun is optional. It is included only where
emphasis is required.
Attempting to explain why there are no instances of subject pronoun
from either language occurring with a verb from the other, Eid (1992) on
the other hand, argues that it is the Arabic subject-verb agreement system
- which requires the verb to reflect the gender, number, and person of its
subject - that causes the doubling of pronouns.
In another study of code-switching, Azuma (1993) proposes a model
which he calls ‘the frame-content model’. He hypothesises that there are
two stages in the process of speech production: the planning frame-
building stage and the content-word insertion stage. According to Azuma,
at the planning frame-building stage, closed-class items (e.g. determiners,
prepositions, pronouns, tense, aspect markers) form a frame of the
sentence. The frame serves as a basic device into which content-word will
be inserted at the later stage (content-word insertion stage). Azuma argues
that the planning frame is essentially a surface tree structure that includes
closed-class items and vacant slots that are subsequently filled in by
content words (e.g. nouns). Taking over code-switching data from
Bentahila and Davies (1983) and Eid (1992), Azuma (1993) applies his
hypothesis to account for the switching of pronouns. He claims that if the
language of the frame is L2 (French or English), then at the frame-building
stage, L2 is called for, a French or English pronoun is retrieved. However,
according to Azuma, because the speaker’s dominant language is Arabic,
therefore an Arabic pronoun may also be erroneously retrieved. At this
stage, because the language of the frame is L2, therefore a pronoun in L2
is also called for, making the occurrence of pronoun doubling - or a switch
from the Arabic pronoun to a L2 pronoun.
What is unclear in Azuma’s frame and content hypothesis is the problem
of how to determine the language of the frame (LI or L2). It appears that
Azuma assumes the language of the frame is the one in which the majority
of morphemes in a given sentence occur. If this assumption is reasonable, it
is similar to the definition of the matrix language in Myers-Scotton’s
(1993b) Matrix Language Frame Model. According to Myers-Scotton, the
13
IN TRO D U C TIO N
matrix language (vs. embedded language) is determined on the basis of the

language of more morphemes in a given discourse. Still, the notion of
‘matrix language’ may not be as clear-cut as claimed in some of the
literature (e.g. Nishimura 1985; Park 1990) and acknowledged by Myers-
Scotton (1990: 83). Although the strength of proposed models claimed to
be universally substantiated remains to be assessed, some researchers lend
their support to general models in their study of switched pronouns. For
example, based on code-switching data in previous studies (e.g. Myers-
Scotton 1993a; Eid 1992), Jake (1994) attempts to account for the
code-switching of pronouns by applying Myers-Scotton’s Matrix language
frame model. Halmari (1993), on the other hand, claims that the
government constraint proposed by Di Sciullo et al. (1986) best accounts
for the switching of pronouns in her Finnish-English data.
Among the early studies working towards the linguistic regularities of
code-switching, Clyne (1967, 1972a) introduces the term ‘triggering’ and
distinguishes four types of triggering, among which his consequential and
anticipational types suggest that a sentence might be formed even before
speakers were sure in which language they were going to speak. In general
terms, he demonstrates that the use of certain words common to the
bilingual’s two languages often triggers code-switching into the language
of that imported word, which then carried on being used for the rest of the
sentence. The following example demonstrates Clyne’s consequential
triggering:
- Im Augenblick les’ ich eins; es handelt von einem alten SECOND
HAND-DEALER AND HIS SON und sein Leben davon.
(German-English, Clyne 1967: 84)
Here ‘secondhand-dealer’ is a trigger-word, which causes the speaker to
continue her utterance in English. On the other hand, ‘anticipational
triggering’ often occurs when the speaker anticipates the use of a word
which appears to be a trigger-word. Clyne’s examples of anticipational
triggering include:
- Wir nehmen unsere Bûcher fiir vier FOR FOUR periods
(German-English, Clyne 1967: 87)
The words ‘for four’ are said in English in anticipation of ‘periods’, which
is a trigger-word since the speaker anticipates that she cannot say ‘periods’
in German.
In later studies on German and Dutch immigrants in Australia, Clyne
(1987a) systématisés his theory of triggering, (see Chapter 3), making a
link between psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects.
14
Among researchers who have sought to establish universal constraints

are Sridhar and Sridhar (1980) with the Dual Structure Principle,
Bentahila and Davies (1983) with the Subcategorisation Principle, Joshi
(1985) with the Non-Switchability Constraint on closed class items. There
are two highly important constraints developed by Poplack (1980, 1981)
and Sankoff and Poplack (1981): the Free Morpheme Constraint and the
Structural Integrity, also known as the Equivalence Constraint.
The Free Morpheme Constraint, according to Poplack (1980: 585-6),
states: ‘Codes may be switched after any constituent in discourse provided
that constituent is not a bound morpheme unless one of the morphemes has
been integrated phonologically into language of the other’. Very briefly, no
code-switching occurs between a free and bound morpheme, i.e. the less
tightly morphemes are bound with the sentences, the more susceptible to
code-switching they are. In a later version, the Free Morpheme Constraint
was refined: ‘A switch is prohibited from occurring between a bound
morpheme and lexical form unless the latter has been phonologically
integrated into the language of the former’ (Poplack 1982: 12).
The equivalence constraint states that
code-switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where
juxtaposition of LI and L2 elements does not violate a syntactic
rule of either language, i.e. at points around which the surface
structure of the two languages map onto each other. According to
this simple constraint, a switch is inhibited from occurring within
a constituent generated by a rule from one language which is not
shared by the other.
(Poplack 1980: 586)
According to the Equivalence Constraint, a code-switch cannot occur
between two sentence elements unless it allows for grammatical word
order for each language.
These two constraints are based on data from Spanish and English
which share basically the same word order. Poplack and Sankoff (1988)
extend the applicability of them to pairs of languages which differ in basic
word order typology. However, counter-examples to both constraints have
turned up, especially between typologically different language pairs
(Adanme-English in Nartey 1982; Japanese-English in Nishimura 1985;
Finnish-English in Poplack et al. 1987 and Halmari 1993; Punjabi-
English in Romaine 1995; Turkish-English in Pfaff 1990; Dutch-English
and German-English in Clyne 1991a). For example, Eliasson (1990)
compiles a list of counter-examples and argues against the two constraints
based on his Maori-English data. Evidence against these most general
15
IN TRO D U C TIO N
constraints has led some researchers to a conclusion that they may often
hold for typologically closely related language pairs or non-agglutinative
languages (Nartey 1982; Berk-Seligson 1986), but not always as even
Spanish-English counter-examples do exist. It is reasonable to conclude
that the constraints as formulated by Poplack are too powerful, and
therefore the claim of universality of such models needs to be relativised.
Another attempt to account for code-switching is the work of Woolford
(1980, 1983), who proposes a model within a generative framework. Her
approach assumes dependency relations on the basis of tree structures
rather than linear orderings. Based on Spanish-English code-switching
data, Woolford argues that
The phrase structure rule from both grammars are freely mixed in
the construction of trees: but the lexicon and word formation
component of each grammar remains entirely autonomous.
Terminal nodes created by a phrase structure rule unique to
English cannot be filled from the Spanish lexicon and vice-versa,
but lexical insertion is free in nodes created by phrase structure
rules common to both languages.
(Woolford 1980: 1)
Subsequently, in an attempt to incorporate a number of universal
principles within a Government-Binding framework of Chomsky (1981),
Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986) propose the Government
Constraint that claims code switching is universally constrained by the
principle of government. They argue that switching is only possible
between elements that are not related by government. In their frame
work, switching between subjects and verbs is allowed, but not between
verbs and objects or within a prepositional phrase. The assumption
behind this formalisation is that the relation between a head and its
syntactic environment is circumscribed by the relation of government.
Despite the theoretical appeal of this constraint, it faces challenges
(Romaine 1986, 1995; Muysken 1990; Clyne 1987a), for the class of
governors includes not only content words but also functional categories
such as inflection. Admitting the existence of counter-examples to this
constraint include:
- between Obj and V:

ekdam se uthkar surroundings dekh linn.
[I would get up all of a sudden and check the surroundings.]
(Pandit 1986: 39)
16
IN TRO D U C TIO N
- between V and Adv:

Uno no podia comer came every day
[We couldn’t eat meat every day.] (Sankoff and Poplack 1981: 27)
The problem now relies not on the universality of a formalisable basis, but
also on the extent to which the constraints proposed in the literature are
supported in specific language pairs (Clyne 1987a).
Before Myers-Scotton (1993a) rejected all the earlier constraints
postulated and proposed her full account of an ambitious model of Matrix
Language Frame, a number of researchers had attempted to define which
one of two languages involved in code-switching is a base-language, also
termed matrix language (Wentz 1977; Joshi 1985; Klavans 1985;
Nishimura 1985). Klavans (1985), for instance, claims that the inflection-
bearing verbs of Spanish-English code-switching sentences determined the
matrix language of code-switching. Joshi (1985) argues that the matrix
language of Marathi-English intrasentential code-switching is determined
by the earliest constituent encountered by a parser. The notion of matrix
language was also implicitly postulated in Woolford (1983). It should be
noted here that switched interjections, exclamatives or adverbial adjuncts
are not taken as the first constituent which, as is understood, do not
determine the structure of the rest of the sentence. By contrast, Sankoff and
Poplack (1981) argue that because there is an equal chance to draw code
switching constituents from Spanish-English, it is unnecessary to
determine the matrix language. Clyne (1987a) points out that for some
language pairs, it is impracticable to talk in terms of a ‘base’ or ‘matrix’
language because some items are common to both languages.
From the point of view of grammatical analysis, the problem of
determining which language in a code-switched sentence is the base
language seems to rest on the nature of models which researchers employ.
In a structural model, some category or set of word classes determines the
base-language: a main verb, for instance, is often assigned the different
semantic roles and determines the state of affairs expressed by the clause;
therefore it is taken to determine the base-language. In the Matrix
Language Frame Model formulated by Myers-Scotton, the grammatical
morphemes are from the base-language. In the Government Model
proposed by Di Sciullo et al. (1986), the notion of the base-language is
present implicitly: the model assumes that each governing element creates
a matrix structure; in that way the highest element in the tree determines
the language for the whole tree.
In the Matrix Language Frame Model, Myers-Scotton and her
associates come up with a full account of an attempt to explain code
17
IN TRO D U C TIO N
switching utterances in a principled, general way (Myers-Scotton 1992a,

1993a). The important point to this theory is the distinction between
content (nouns, verb, etc.) and system (articles, inflections, etc.)
morphemes in the embedded language. The model rests on the assumption
that code-switched sentences have one matrix language, which determines
the order of the elements in switched constituents and provides the system
morphemes in such constituents.
1.4.4 Extra-linguistic factors related to code-switching

In a brief discussion on factors that may influence code-switching,
Gardner-Chloros (1991: 51) suggests that extra-linguistic factors, such
as age, sex, social networks, cannot by themselves explain patterns of
code-switching because such (independent) variables vary in importance
and differ in different communities. She reiterates that an investigation of
code-switching needs to take into consideration both linguistic and extra-
linguistic factors in order for it to have a full account of the phenomenon.
Indeed, it has been realised that code-switching cannot be satisfactorily
explained only along the dimensions of structural constraints or rhetorical
functions (Bentahila and Davies 1995). Along this line, other variables that
are considered as potential influences on code-switching patterns should
be treated equally as relevant factors to an explanation of patterns of
code-switching as well. Poplack (1980), for example, reports in her study
of Spanish-English bilinguals that those with high proficiency in both
languages used more intrasentential code-switching than those with less
proficiency in English. Nortier (1990) also finds in her Moroccan
informants in the Netherlands that intrasentential code-switching was used
with greater frequency by those with high proficiency in Arabic and
Dutch.
On the basis of Labov (1972a) and Gal (1978a, 1978b, 1979), Milroy
(1980) presents a social theory derived from the social network model,
which is based on the qualitative and structural characteristics of
individuals’ social interactions. She examines the way in which an
individual’s social relations influence his or her patterns of verbal
behaviour. To determine whether, and to what extent, independent
variables, such as social status, age, affect speech patterns, Milroy selects
certain factors as criteria to establish a score reflecting the ‘density’ and
‘multiplexity’ of an individual’s informal social network (Milroy 1980:
49-51). Speakers linked to each other through one common factor may be
contrasted to a multiplexity network which consists of an individual
speaker who is linked to others in more than one role (Section 2.3.1).
18
IN T RO D U C TIO N
Milroy finds that the social network in which an individual is involved is

statistically associated with the individual’s speech behaviour.
There are problems concerning the selection of extra-linguistic factors
in order to establish the network score. As noted by Kerswill (1994), the
selection requires that the researcher has to have a knowledge of the
community under investigation. Without this knowledge, the researcher
is unlikely to be able to judge which social variable (e.g. social status) is
more important than others in order to determine a relationship between
the selected variable and linguistic behaviour. In addition to this, the
selected variable may correlate with other ones. In this case, the researcher
has to ascertain the selected variable is an isolated one before claiming a
direct relationship between that particular variable and linguistic
behaviour. For example, in a number of Asian societies, age is likely to
be judged as a high social status, but at the same time educational
attainment may be perceived of as such. Thus, a combination of older age
and educational attainment contributes to what is seen as ‘high social-
status’. As may be expected, an older person may have different social
networks from those with high educational achievement.
In a number of sociolinguistic studies, researchers have taken different
variables as the indicator of social status. For example, Labov (1966)
measures social status in terms of factors such as occupation, education
and income. Reid (1976) takes occupational status as the sole criterion of
social status. Trudgill (1974a) considers social status, age, and sex as
separate social variables in relation to speech. Others, however, have
criticised that the correlation between social variables and linguistic
variation should not be seen as a causal relationship (Romaine 1982a).
Nevertheless, the correlation between extra-linguistic factors and linguistic
behaviour has become a focus in a number of studies (Milroy and Li 1991,
1995; Bentahila and Davies 1995).
In their study of different generations of Chinese-English bilinguals in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Milroy and Li (1991, 1995) report that different
generations of their informants used code-switching for different purposes,
and these differences can be related to social networks. In a similar
approach to code-switching, Bentahila and Davies (1995) compare code
switching patterns between three generations of Arabic-French bilinguals
in Morocco. They find similar results to those of Milroy and Li. Tosi
(1991) also reports similar findings in his study of Italian-English
bilinguals in Britain, Canada, and Australia.
In an attempt to provide a general theoretical explanation of the
sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of code-switching, in Social
Motivation fo r Code-Switching: Evidence from Africa, Myers-Scotton
19
IN T RO D U C TIO N
(1993a) proposes a theoretical model called ‘Markedness Model’. In very

general terms, Myers-Scotton argues that most code-switching is to
negotiate a social situation, and code-switching is viewed as a socially
functional phenomenon which occurs with the speaker’s intention. It
remains Myers-Scotton’s argument that there are socio-psychological
motivations behind code-switching. The basic theoretical assumptions of
the Markedness Model are that, according to Myers-Scotton, interaction
types in every conversational situation are conventionalised and have
relatively fixed schemata about the role relations between speakers. The
schemata are the unmarked ‘rights-and-obligation sets’ (RO sets) for
particular interaction types. A speaker may comply with the unmarked RO
set on the basis of non-linguistic conditions, such as his/her identity,
degree of formality, that is, s/he may choose the unmarked code during a
conversation; or s/he may wish to establish a new RO set by using a
marked one to maintain or change the relations between themselves.
In code-switching, if the speaker uses the unexpected code to achieve
a strategic effect in conversation, then this phenomenon is called
‘code-switching as a marked choice’. If, however, the speaker conforms
to the expected one to maintain a desired situation or meaning, this is
called ‘code-switching as an unmarked choice’.
In this model, speakers appear to switch between codes in accordance
with the purpose of the conversation, and they switch codes as they wish to
do ‘some social work’ (1993a: 100). In the words of Myers-Scotton: ‘...
all code choices can ultimately be explained in terms of such speaker
motivations’ (p. 113). To a very large extent, Myers-Scotton wants her
model to have validity for all multilingual communities in which code
switching is an aspect of daily linguistic behaviour. In Chapter 5, while
using the Markedness Model to explain the code-switching of personal
pronouns in my corpus, I shall also briefly discuss the extent to which the
model is applicable in this particular type of code-switching.
1.5 CONCLUSION
The above-mentioned studies suggest that code-switching can be treated
not only from the perspective of structural constraints and rhetorical
functions, but also with a consideration of various relevant factors that may
influence the phenomenon. In Chapters 2 and 3, this perspective will be
taken up again in dealing with patterns of code-switching among
Vietnamese-English informants.
As far as the proposed constraints are concerned, it seems to be implied
that when two languages are in contact, they are standard and stable
20
IN TRO D U C TIO N
languages (Clyne 1987a). In commenting on the underlying assumptions

about languages in contact, Clyne stresses the need for theoretical linguists
to use language contact data which should ‘represent a typologically very
wide range of language pairs. Otherwise they run the risk of developing
and supporting powerful universal models which cannot be substantiated
universally’ (1987a: 762).
Theoretical problems with formulating absolute constraints have led
scholars to pay equal attention to the occurrence and non-occurrence
switches in similar environments (e.g. Nortier 1990), with a view to
establishing which occur more frequently (Muysken 1995). Still, a
common problem challenging the principles and constraints is that they all
face the existence of counter-examples. Thus, it is reasonable to admit that
adequate formulations of constraints on code-switching are not yet
possible.
There would therefore appear to be concern with the extent to which the
constraints on code switching proposed in the literature account for the
bilingual behaviour in a given corpus.
21
Chapter 2
Subjects and methodology
2.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the methods of data collection and gives an overall
account of the Vietnamese community from which the data were drawn.
This chapter consists of four sections. In the first section, a general
description of the Vietnamese community in Australia is given, followed
by a detailed account of the Vietnamese community in Melbourne in
which the data were collected. The second section examines the social
networks of the Vietnamese community in order to provide a framework
for an analysis of patterns of code-switching to be presented in the
following chapters. In the third section, the methods of data collection and
the rationale for adopting these data collection methods will be presented.
Finally, the sample points and subjects of the present study will be
described.
2.2 GENERAL BACKGROUND OF VIETNAMESE

IN AUSTRALIA
The history of Vietnamese immigration to Australia dates back to August
1920 when thirty-eight Vietnamese who were travelling between Vietnam
and New Caledonia landed near Townsville, Queensland, to seek refuge as
their ship had been blown off course by a severe storm (BIR 1994).
According to the Bureau of Immigration and Population Research
(1994), the first Vietnamese students under the Colombo Plan arrived in
Australia to undertake university education in 1958. As of 30 April 1975,
there were about 1000 Vietnamese in Australia, predominantly Colombo
Plan and private students, and orphans adopted by Australians and wives
of Australian military personnel who had served in Vietnam during the war
(Coughlan 1989).
The 1975 Communist victory in the former South Vietnam caused an
exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who fled abroad. In 1975,
23
SU B JEC TS AND M ETH O D O LO G Y
Australia accepted over 1000 Vietnamese refugees. In late 1976, the first
boat carrying Vietnamese asylum seekers arrived on Australia’s northern
shores. In the next five years, about fifty additional boats with more than
2000 Vietnamese arrived. This period also saw a mass exodus of
Vietnamese people mainly from the South, who managed to reach the
country via refugee camps scattered over a number of Southeast Asian
nations and Hong Kong. Until 1988, these people had been automatically
granted refugee status and Australia, among other receiving countries,
offered them permanent settlement under the Refugee and Special
Humanitarian Program.
From 1982, the Vietnamese Family Migration Program was instituted
and migration from Vietnam was brought into line with Australia’s normal
migration processes.
In brief, the history of Vietnamese immigration into Australia has three
distinct stages: the pre-1975 period during which Colombo Plan students
and 537 orphans entered Australia (Coughlan 1989); the refugee
resettlement program from 1975; and a family reunion program since
the mid-1980s (BIR 1994).
The 1991 census records 121,813 first-generation Vietnamese. There
were also a further 25,151 Australian-born who reported that one or both
parents had been bom in Vietnam (BIR 1994).
There are problems with the accuracy of data concerning the ethnic
identity of Vietnam-born people. The 1986 census shows that about 64 per
cent of the Vietnam-born community were of Vietnamese ancestry and
around 33 per cent of Chinese ancestry. The question of ethnic identity
was not asked in the 1991 census. According to the estimation of the
Bureau of Immigration and Population Research (1994), it is likely that
around 27 per cent of the Vietnam-born community were of Chinese
ancestry. These people spoke Chinese at home. (This fact was taken into
account in the course of collecting data for this study as the research group
consists of those who are of Vietnamese ancestry and speak Vietnamese at
home.)
Since the early 1990s, the Vietnamese immigration into Australia has
begun to slow down due to the implementation of the 1989 Comprehensive
Plan of Action by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
which aims to screen out Vietnamese boat people considered economic
migrants and repatriate them from refugee camps to Vietnam. However,
the Vietnamese population in Australia has continued to grow steadily due
to the arrival of those who have come under the Family Migration
Program. Figure 2.1 illustrates the geographic distribution of the Vietnam-
born population in Australia in 1991.
24
SU BJEC TS AND METHODOLOGY
AUSTRALIA
Darwin
Northern
Territory
0.5% Queensland
Western Australia 7%
7%
Brisbane
South Australia
8% New South Wales
Perth 40%
Sydney
Canberra
Adelaide Victoria A.C.T.
36% j 1%
Melbourne
Tasmania
u.o /o
Hobart
Figure 2.1 Distribution of Vietnam-born population in Australia

Map: ABS 1996. Data added by the researcher
Figure 2.1 shows Vietnamese arrival trends to Australia and their

distribution between states and territories and serves to illustrate an overall
view of their settlement process in Australia. This macro description is
followed by a micro-scale study of Vietnamese settlement patterns in
Melbourne with special focus on three local government areas (LGAs) of
metropolitan Melbourne. The three areas are Footscray, Richmond, and
Springvale (see Section 2.4). The following outline serves to provide the
setting in which this study was carried out.
2.2.1 The Vietnamese community in Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria which is known by many as the
‘multicultural capital of Australia, with a broad base of European and
non-European languages’ (Kipp, Clyne and Pauwels 1995: 39).
The 1991 census includes information on places of usual residence of
the Vietnamese who live in Melbourne. Overall, the Vietnam-born
25
population comprised only 1.5 per cent of the total population in the
Melbourne Statistical Division in 1991. However, there are variations in
the patterns o f their distribution. For the purpose of this study,
concentration was calculated as the per centage of the total population
o f the local government area* using the language at home.
The result of the calculation reveals the distribution of Vietnam-born
persons as the proportion of the total population. As indicated in
Figure 2.2, the distribution of the Vietnam-born population within
Melbourne has focused on those areas in the west and south east and
within central Melbourne.
There were 44,082 Vietnam-born persons in Victoria, representing
36.3 per cent of all Vietnam-born population in Australia. Twenty per
cent of the total Vietnamese population in Victoria reside in the Local
Government Areas of Melbourne, Richmond, Collingwood and Prahran.
Another 32 per cent live in the western suburbs of Melbourne, including
Footscray and Sunshine and substantial numbers are residents of
the south-eastern suburbs, with a 15 per cent concentration in Spring-
vale.
Like the Vietnamese in other parts of Australia, those in Melbourne
formed many community groups of their own within the first years of
settlement, which numbered several dozen. These include some Buddhist
and Catholic congregations and youth groups. With the support of
the Victoria government, there were fifteen centres of the Saturday
School of Languages in and around Melbourne in which some 1000
Vietnamese children were enrolled. The Vietnamese have three
Melbourne-based weekly magazines with a national circulation of some
6000 copies. In addition, there are six Sydney-based daily and bi-weekly
newspapers circulating in Victoria. Since 1993, SBS radio broadcasts
fourteen hours a week of Vietnamese language programmes on a
nationwide scale.
The Vietnamese language has been taught in as many as seven
campuses in Melbourne, and is one of the languages examined at
matriculation level.
2.3 SOCIAL NETWORKS

As noted in Chapter 1, it is generally assumed that to a certain extent there
is a relationship between patterns of languages by individual speakers and
*Local government areas are defined as legal local government areas and incorporate local
government councils such as town and shires (1991 census).
26
the social context within which they interact and with which they identify
(Milroy 1980). Accounts of the relation of patterns of language used
by individual speakers to the broader social context have been attempted
by several scholars (Gal 1979; Milroy 1987; Heller 1990; Milroy and
Li 1995).
This section sketches the structure of the Vietnamese community in
Melbourne. The purpose of this section is to provide a background
framework for the analysis of patterns of code-switching by the
informants, which is to be presented in the following chapters. The
framework used in this section is based chiefly on Milroy’s approach to
social networks (1980).
The concept of social network can be seen ‘as a boundless web of ties
which reaches out through a whole society, linking people to one another,
however remotely’ (Milroy and Li 1995: 138). By examining types of
personal social circles in which individual speakers interact, the structure
of networks in a particular community (the research population) would be
identified. With regard to code-switching in a bilingual community, one
purpose underlying the examination of social networks is to provide a
detailed account of the community (to which bilingual speakers belong)
with a view to establishing the relation of social networks to patterns of
language usage. The network approach is thus built upon the assumption
that types of social association with which individual speakers are
involved and the way they use the two languages are interrelated. In the
words of Milroy and Li (1995: 138): ‘... variation in the structure of
different individuals’ personal networks will, for a number of reasons,
systematically affect the way they use the two languages in the community
repertoire’.
Scholars have developed various analytical tools to examine the social
networks in the research population, especially in migrant communities.
One analytical tool proposed by Berry (1988) was used to analyse types of
social circles in which immigrants interact. With respect to the relation
ship between code-switching by bilingual speakers and types of social
networks with which they closely identify, Milroy’s ‘network strength
scale’ (Milroy 1980; Milroy and Li 1995), which is used to examine the
relationship between strength of link and variation in language behaviour,
is particularly helpful. Milroy’s scale is intended to chart the social
boundary within which speakers interact. However, as noted by Milroy and
Li (1995), this scale is particularly efficient if it is used to investigate the
effect of strong (and weak) ties developed within a definable (geographical)
territory. This indicates that the application of methods for investigating
social networks should take into account the salient features of the
27
community under investigation. Therefore, in examining the networks of a

community whose members are dispersed in different geographical areas,
such as the Vietnamese community in Melbourne, different methods,
(other than ones employed for examining a community within a definable
territory), should be applied. For example, attempting to provide an
account of the relation of code-switching to the structure of social
networks in the Chinese community in Tyneside, north-eastern England,
Milroy and Li (1995) develop the notions of ‘exchange’ and ‘interactive’
networks which had been introduced by Milardo (1988). Exchange
networks consist of persons who tend to associate closely with their
relatives and friends for mutual assistance (Milroy and Li 1995). This type
of network comprises several sub-groups to which individual speakers
belong, and functions as informal social support systems. Given the
characteristics of exchange networks, the links among those who are
involved in them are strong.
On the other hand, interactive networks consist of persons who may
interact not only within their own sub-groups, but also with the wider
society. Such interactions may therefore cross over the boundaries of
social class within which they closely identify. The nature of interactive
networks does not necessarily involve commitments to one another in
terms of personal assistance, and therefore the links of this type of
networks are weak.
It appears that the notions of exchange and interactive networks
developed by Milroy and Li (1995) are particularly relevant and helpful in
examining social networks of the Vietnamese community in Melbourne,
which is described as follows.
2.3.1 Social networks of the Vietnamese in Melbourne

Given the fact that the Vietnamese in Melbourne, in particular the
informants for this study, have resided in areas which are relatively far
from one another in terms of geographical location, and that they have
created among themselves several sub-groups to which they belong, the
researcher made the following assumptions. If the social ties among
the Vietnamese can be defined as ‘strong’ (Milroy and Li 1995: 138), there
will not be different patterns of linguistic behaviour across the three
groups chosen as sample points in this study; and the use of code
switching will not be specifically related to the different location of the
informants.
With this in mind, a brief account of social networks of the Vietnamese
in Melbourne is given here to provide a background for later discussion
28
concerning patterns of code-switching in the following chapter. The idea

behind the presentation of Vietnamese social networks is that to some
extent, the networks of the Vietnamese as a whole relate to the selected
sample and we can more or less draw inferences about social networks in
which the informants are involved.
Examinations of networks in the Vietnamese community through the
researcher’s own observation and interviews with informants revealed that
in the course of two decades, Vietnamese immigration into Melbourne has
created family and friend networks that extend across many areas. Such
links can be seen through the fact that those who live in Richmond, for
example, may have relatives/friends in Springvale and Footscray. At first
sight, the nature of such ties is casual but enduring.
Due to a number of factors, the Vietnamese established among
themselves a type of network which can be described as an informal social
support system. First, the need for exchanging information in the
resettlement process was crucial against the background of disrupted
lives and social upheaval in a new country. Information exchange was
especially critical in the case of those with low English-language skills
who sought assistance from their close circles of relatives and friends.
Through this informal source of exchanges, they informally established a
network which functions as a mutual support system. Within the system,
various types of practical assistance were offered, such as car repairs,
babysitting, interpreting or filling in application forms. Through these
networks, people might have also offered financial loans to friends or
relatives for a major purchase, such as a car. This type of social association
can be described, in Milroy’s terms (1980), as strong, and seen as an
exchange network (Milroy and Li 1995).
Second, it was revealed that those arriving in Melbourne in more recent
years were accommodated within already existing informal networks, and
these networks have over the past decade or so grown with the
establishment o f many formal groups, such as Vietnamese Youth,
Australian-Vietnamese Women, Vietnamese Community Association.
These groups stood out as formal associations and served as representative
bodies for their members in dealing with others and the government.
Their active co-operation can be seen through the implementation of
projects involving social, political and language maintenance activities. As
a matter of cause and effect, members of these groups have increased their
contact with other groups and their social interactional circles went beyond
the social and geographical territories. For example, it was found during
the course of the interviews that every informant could locate her/himself
in a social circle, or s/he could claim to belong to more than one group.
29
Thus, members of informal support mechanisms did not only interact

within their own sub-group to give assistance and commitment to others,
but also moved in other groups to foster a wider relationship with others.
The wide range of relationships may give them an opportunity to turn to
their own circles of relatives/friends or to others in times of crisis. Such
relationships bound sub-groups together, at least on a temporary basis, and
can be defined as weak.
The findings led to the conclusion that there are both strong and weak
links among the Vietnamese. These links are maintained through mutual
assistance networks and through co-operation in implementing community
projects concerning resettlement, and reflect the tradition of collective
life-styles in Vietnam.
2.4 METHODOLOGY
This section discusses the methods of data collection, which include
recording natural speech and interviews based on the framework of a
questionnaire.
2.4.1 Data collection

The present study is based on empirical data gathered by the researcher.
The sample consists of sixty Vietnamese-English bilinguals who came to
Australia as adults and adolescents and live in and around Melbourne.
They all identified themselves as of Vietnamese ancestry.
The Vietnamese community in Melbourne was chosen for two reasons.
First, the researcher has lived in Melbourne for almost twelve years and
found access to the community fairly easy due to his participation in social
and cultural events organised by the community. Through these activities,
the researcher has had informal contact with a number of groups. Social
researchers (e.g. Labov 1981; Milroy 1987; Milroy and Li 1995) often note
that such contacts are an advantage in conducting community-based
investigations of sociolinguistic behaviour of ethnic groups, because once
the researcher becomes a member of the community, he would extend his
contact by becoming ‘a friend of a friend’ (Milroy 1980) of potential
informants as yet unknown to him. In my case, it is possible to find
potential informants in the community of which I am a member. Second,
Melbourne hosts a large Vietnamese population (second only to Sydney)
which is concentrated in identified areas. For practical reasons, these
densely populated Vietnamese areas make it easy for the researcher to
locate informants.
30
The reason for adopting the methods of data collection involving

recording of interviews and natural speech was that they were used to
complement each other, and each has its own advantages and
disadvantages as indicated in Sections 2.4.1.1 and 2.4.1.2.
2.4.1.1 Questionnaire and interview

Many researchers point out that speech within an interview is always likely
to be more formal than in a relaxed, informal situation, and that it is difficult
to obtain an overall impression of informants (Labov 1972b; Wolfson
1976). Moreover, it is agreed that because of the relatively short length of
the interview schedule, there would not be enough time to elicit natural
speech. Despite these disadvantages, the interview situation is well defined
and identical for each informant; therefore the speech data produced by
different informants in the interview is more easily compared than that
produced in informal situations. Following Clyne (1967), the researcher
decided to conduct the interview using a questionnaire. The questionnaire
(see Appendix 1) was designed to elicit biographical information and
ascertain that the informants met the defined selection criteria.
The questionnaire served as a framework of questions to guide the
interview. It was structured in such a way that the sequencing of the
questions and topics could be answered in any order; that is, in view of
fostering a spontaneous flow of topics to ease the interview atmosphere,
the order of questions in the questionnaire was not strictly followed. This
was to stimulate the informants’ active participation in the interview.
The questionnaire comprised twenty-five questions. It first inquired
about the informant’s birthplace, age, year of arrival in Australia, area of
residence and language spoken at home. The informant was requested to
identify her/himself as either ethnic Chinese or Vietnamese. This
information was considered to be relevant with regard to the purpose of
the study concerning only those who speak Vietnamese as their first
language, and are of Vietnamese ancestry.
The questionnaire also contained questions about the television and
radio programmes the informants watch and hear, and about books and
newspapers they usually read. These questions were needed to obtain an
overall picture of the daily activities of the informants.
The following topics were chosen as the elicitation cues of the interviews:
• Their experience in Vietnam.
• Their experience as a Vietnamese-Australian in school, work and
family environments.
31
• Current issues in the community.

• Their knowledge of current issues in Vietnam and Australia.
• Participation in social activities in the community.
• The extent of involvement in Australian-related activities.
Data obtained from the above topics, in combination with information
about the informant’s circle of relatives and friends, were needed to obtain
the social networks with which the informant associated and identified.
Closely following a method implemented by Clyne (1967), the
researcher asked the informants to talk about pictures of a typical
Vietnamese and a typical Australian scene. The purpose here was to obtain
comparable examples of the informants’ speech in different cultural
contexts.
An attempt was made to hold the interview in an environment
familiar to the informant. This was done to put the informant at ease.
For this reason, most of the meeting places for interviews were private
homes.
At the beginning of the interviews, the researcher spoke in Vietnamese
and requested that the informant spoke to him in Vietnamese. The
informants were also told that they were expected to speak the way they
would in everyday interactions. All informants knew the researcher was
involved in a study of language usage by the Vietnamese, and all
consented to grant interviews.
The durations of the interviews ranged from thirty to forty-five
minutes. The interviews were carried out from May to December 1994.
In addition to face-to-face interviews, some informants were asked to
tape natural conversations which occurred in their homes. This forms part
of the corpus on which the analysis of this study is based, and is presented
below.
2.4.1.2 Recording o f natural speech

The spontaneous nature of real life speech is said to be particularly
important for the study of linguistic behaviour, specifically of code
switching, as code-switching tends to occur in informal situations (Poplack
1980). However, the disadvantage of this data is that since natural speech
occurs in different contexts which may not be defined and are not identical
for each informant, natural speech data of different people and of the same
people talking about different things may not be compatible. On the other
hand, since the interview situations are well defined, interview data of
different people are easy to compare. Actually, the method of recording
32
natural speech was propagated by Labov and followed by other

variationalists as part of their methodology (Labov 1981; Rickford
1987; Milroy 1987).
During the course of collection, it was often possible to record the same
informants’ natural speech more than once. The researcher was therefore
able to collect several recordings of eleven informants in order to obtain
samples of speech in a wide range of situations. These recordings
consisted mainly of gatherings of friends and relatives, in which there were
two or more informants. In no case were these gatherings specifically
arranged for the recordings. The researcher asked the informants to record
conversations involving themselves and their friends or relatives.
Six of the recordings were made in family settings and five were of
interaction between friends. The informants were asked to record
themselves and others in typical, everyday conversations. Having regard
to possible ethical concerns, the researcher left the informant in charge of
the recording free to decide whether or not the other speakers should be
made aware of the tape recorder.
Nevertheless, one problem remains, as is suggested in the literature.
Informants who were aware of the recording might behave untypically in
comparison to their speech behaviour in daily conversations (Gardner-
Chloros 1991). However, it will be evident whether their linguistic
behaviour has departed from their normal patterns of speech if their verbal
behaviour is compared with that of the same informant in the interview. In
fact, this problem was noted in Blom and Gumperz’s study of code
switching in Norway (1972). According to Blom and Gumperz (1972:
426-7), speakers in self-selected groups will be unaffected by the presence
of tape-recording equipment. To a large extent the untypical verbal
behaviour of those who are aware of the recording would be noticed on the
recording if it is compared with their speech behaviour in the interview
(Gardner-Chloros 1991). This suggests that the speech produced by those
who are aware of the recording during the social gatherings is likewise
unaffected by this extraneous factor.
The efficacy of recording natural speech deserves a note here. In the
initial stage of this research, as discussed, the researcher intended to use
this method alongside the method of interview recordings in view of the
fact that they complement each other. At the later stage, upon examining
the data obtained from the natural speech of the informants, the researcher
found that it is likely that many informants switched due to some
extralinguistic factors, such as the social status of the participants. As
a consequence of this observation, a detailed account of this type of
code-switching will be provided in Chapter 5.
33
2.5 SAMPLE AREAS

This section describes the sample areas from which the data for this study
were drawn, with a brief account of the location in which the informants
live.
Amongst the areas in Melbourne with a concentration of Vietnamese,
Footscray, Richmond and Springvale* (see Figure 2.2) were chosen as
sample areas for this study for various reasons. When the Vietnamese are
considered as a per centage of the total population in these three areas, it
can be said Footscray, Richmond, and Springvale are areas of high
Vietnamese concentration.
Footscray is an inner western municipality of Melbourne. The high
concentration of Vietnamese population in this area and its adjacent
suburbs (e.g. St Albans) appears to be due to two main factors. First, the
initial location of Vietnamese migrants in the migrant centre, known as
Midway Hostel, made them familiar with the area. It is recognised that
most tend to find their accommodation on leaving the migrant centre in the
area of their initial location. As early arrivals chose the location, they
appeared to have set the location patterns, and later arrivals reinforced
them through choosing the area to reside with or near families or friends.
This finding is similar to that of Viviani (1984) in Brisbane. Second, the
concentration of Vietnamese employment in the western suburbs of
Melbourne reflects the location of the main motor vehicle plants - Toyota
and Ford. These areas have been ‘migrant areas’ for decades. They have
always been predominantly working-class suburbs.
According to the ABS data 1991 (Supermap), the Footscray area hosts
4523 Vietnamese speakers, representing 10.3 per cent of the population of
Footscray. Over the past decade, the Vietnamese cultural aspect in
Footscray is most obvious in Hopkins Street. With the exception of a few
large retail outlets owned by non-Vietnamese, the street is composed of
Vietnamese-owned food stores, travel agencies and restaurants. There are
also a number of Vietnamese doctors, dentists and lawyers. Recently, this
area elected a Vietnam-born member of state parliament.
*These three areas were selected before the 1995 amalgamations of LGAs. As at 1 July 1995,
there were seventy-eight LGAs across Victoria (compared to 194 LGAs in 1994). Hence,
municipal boundaries were changed. Parts of Footscray, Altona, Williamstown and Werribee
were included in the new LGA of Hobsons Bay. Richmond was merged with Collingwood,
Fitzroy and part of Northcote to form the new LGA of Yarra. The new LGA of Kingston
included Springvale, Oakleigh, Chelsea, and parts of Mordialloc and Moorabbin. However,
the link between SLAs and LGAs has been maintained by ensuring that each LGA is made up
of one or more SLAs (source: Victorian Year Book 1996, No. 108).
34
SU BJEC TS AND METHODOLOGY
Northern
MELBOURNE
Middle Melbourne
.Moreland City Northern
Outer Melbourne Yarra Ranges
Hume City Shire Part A
Melton-Wyndham Eastern
Middle Melbourne
FOOTSCRAY Eastern
(in Western Outer Melbourne
Dandenong)
SPRINGVALE
RICHMOND (in Greater
Dandenong)
South Eastern
Boroondara City
Outer Melbourne
Frankston City
i j> if
i - .'.v,v. ••••. .• •••
FOOTSCRAY: 20
RICHMOND: 19
SPRINGVALE: 21 Source: ABS Cdata 1991 (Supermap)
Figure 2.2 Local government areas - Melbourne

The number of informants added by the researcher
Taking into account these factors, it becomes clear that Footscray is an

ideal resource from which the researcher can access relevant research data.
A total of twenty informants residing in the area were interviewed.
The second sample area was Richmond, which has been known as the
first area of settlement of successive groups of migrants. An inner
municipality of the Melbourne metropolitan area, Richmond was selected
because the Vietnamese, as a proportion of the total population in this
area, again appear highly concentrated. By 1991, there were 2141
Vietnamese speakers in the area, representing 9.9 per cent of the entire
population of the Richmond area. The apparent concentration of the
Vietnamese in this area could be explained by a number of factors. The
35
establishment of public housing accommodation in 1964 and its further

expansion in the 1970s and 1980s has brought a large number of
Vietnamese migrants into the area. Over the past ten years the increasing
number of Asian food stores and restaurants in Victoria Street, known by
some as ‘Little Saigon’, gives it the impression, at least at face value, of
being a thriving business district. There are many factories, such as
clothing, which have provided much migrant employment located in
Richmond. Many of the Vietnamese are resident in North Richmond
which contains high-rise and walk-up flats of public housing. Being close
to the city centre, this area is very accessible with trains, trams, and
buses.
In addition to the seventeen informants residing in Richmond, two live in
the city of Collingwood, a neighbouring area of Richmond with 1290
Vietnamese speakers, (also with public housing accommodation). Both
these areas have Victoria Street as a common boundary and are viewed by
residents as the suburb of Richmond. Thus the total number of nineteen
informants was grouped as residents of Richmond.
As with Footscray, Springvale was chosen as the third sample area
because it is one of the main south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne in which
the Vietnamese have established their homes. Factors that brought
Vietnamese migrants to the area are very much similar to those that
brought the Vietnamese to Footscray: The initial location of Vietnamese
immigrants in the migrant centre, known as Enterprise Hostel, and the
area’s heavy industrial base with the location of the Nissan motor plant in
its adjacent suburb of Clayton, and the General Motors Holden assembly
plant located in nearby Dandenong. Both motor plants have long been
employers of large numbers of non-English speaking migrants.
There were 5192 Vietnamese speakers in the Springvale area alone,
representing 6.2 per cent of its population. It is in this area that the number
of shopping centres, especially Asian food stores and restaurants, has
increased markedly over the years. This area has become a common
meeting place for Vietnamese from adjacent suburbs who come to shop,
work or participate in social activities of their own community. A total of
twenty-one informants residing in Springvale were interviewed.
In brief, the above description of the three selected areas indicates that
these areas emerge as the main locations of Vietnamese migrants in
Melbourne. The difference between them is that Footscray and Spring
vale contain two migrant centres while Richmond does not. Another
difference between the three areas is that Richmond is an inner area of
metropolitan Melbourne, while Footscray and Springvale are outer
suburbs.
36
The similarity between the three areas is that there is much industrial
activity within these areas or in nearby suburbs. There are similar types of
shopping centres with many asian food stores and the like. All the
distribution trends suggest that the Vietnamese generally prefer to reside in
areas with a high proportion of their fellow countrymen.
2.5.1 Analysis of the informants

A total of sixty informants were interviewed for this study To condense
information about their relevant attributes and to identify individual
informants, a sequence of four basic attribute components (age, sex, date of
arrival in Australia and place of residence) was employed. For example,
69F78S identifies a woman bom in 1969 who arrived in Australia in 1978 and
lives in Springvale; and 33M75R a man bom in 1933 who came to Australia
in 1975 and lives in Richmond (see the full list of informants in Appendix 2).
The sixty informants are post-1975 migrants for whom Vietnamese is
their first language. The researcher has included an equal number of males
and females. The informants’ age on arrival in Australia varied from five
to forty-two. The age of the informants varied from eighteen to sixty-two
at the time of the interviews.
2.5.2 Age and sex of the informants

The age and sex distribution of the informants interviewed is presented in
Table 2.1. It indicates that the age parameter is almost equally distributed
between the genders.
A few notes are made here to judge the extent to which the age
distribution of the informants represents a balanced sample of the total
Vietnamese population in Victoria. Table 2.1 gives an impression that
there is a predominance of informants between the ages of twenty-five and
Table 2.1 Age and sex distribution of the informants

Age group (Years) Number o f females Number o f males
18-24 1 5
25-34 13 13
35-44 8 10
45-54 2 1
55+ - 1
Total 30 30
37
forty-four, with the older age groups (over fifty) in particular being under
represented. However, the unequal distribution of the informants’ age is
consistent with the pattern of the Vietnamese community in Victoria.
According to the 1986 census, the highest per centage of Vietnamese
speakers was in the thirty to fifty-four age group representing 31.8 per cent
of the population of the community, followed by the twenty to twenty-nine
age group (10.6 per cent). The 1986 census shows that only 2.9 per cent
were aged between fifty-five and sixty-four.
Consistent with the age profile of the community in Victoria, the 1991
census figures also show a high per centage of Vietnamese speakers in the
twenty-five to thirty-four and thirty-five to forty-four age groups with 28.6
per cent and 19.3 per cent respectively.
For the sake of comparison, Table 2.2, based on the 1986 and 1991
census figures, indicates per centage of age distribution of the Vietnamese
speakers in Victoria and that of age distribution in this study.
According to the 1991 census, the median age of all Vietnam-born
persons in Australia was twenty-nine years. In comparison, that of the total
Australian population was thirty-two years. The 1991 census also shows
that seventy-one per cent of all the Vietnam-born were aged less than
thirty-five years. Given these figures, the pattern of the informants’ age
distribution is reflective of the wider Vietnamese population in Victoria
and Australia. The implication of the age pattern of the informants is that
it is a young group, with a high proportion of school aged children and a
low proportion of elderly persons (Kipp, Clyne and Pauwels 1995).
2.5.3 Home language

Vietnamese is among the top ten community languages used in the home
in Melbourne in 1991 (Kipp, Clyne and Pauwels 1995). This is reflected
Table 2.2 Percentage of Vietnamese by age in 1986 and 1991 in Victoria,

and in this study
Age group in 1986 15-19 20-29 30-54 55-64
Percentage 10.6% 31.7% 31.8% 2.9%
Age group in 1991 15-24 25-34 35^4 45-54 55-64
Percentage 23.6% 28.6% 19.3% 6.6% 4.8%
Age group in this study 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+
Percentage 20% 43.3% 30% 5% 1.7%
Source: 1986 and 1991 census
38
by the fact that most of the informants stated that Vietnamese was the
language spoken in their home most of the time. In particular, twenty-one
informants said that in their family, siblings (including themselves) speak
Vietnamese to the parents and English to each other. Sometimes siblings
answered their parents in English. There were two women who were
married to English speakers but usually spoke Vietnamese with their
children when their husbands were not present.
With the exception of four informants, the remainder of the informants
claimed that they could follow radio and television in English well enough
to be informed of daily events. They most often read English newspapers,
and nine said they never read Vietnamese newspapers for various reasons.
Overall, all stated that they speak Vietnamese at home. This appears to
reflect a general pattern of language usage of the Vietnamese recorded in
the census. According to the 1991 census, 74.3 per cent of the Vietnamese
population in Victoria reported speaking Vietnamese at home. In that state,
among the Vietnam-born persons who were:
• aged 5 to 14 years, 81 per cent spoke Vietnamese at home;
• aged 15 to 44 years, 73.5 per cent spoke Vietnamese at home;
• aged 45 to 64 years, 71.2 per cent spoke Vietnamese at home;
• aged 65 and over, 75.5 per cent spoke Vietnamese at home.
The 1991 census also shows that the proportion of Vietnam-born persons
indicating that they spoke ‘English only’ at home was low: only 1.6 per cent
Table 2.3 Language spoken at home by age in Victoria
Language/Age group Number Percentage

5-14
English only 124 2.2
Vietnamese 4615 81.0
15-44
English only 514 1.6
Vietnamese 23,020 73.5
45-64
English only 38 0.8
65+
English only 9 0.7
39
Table 2.4 Arrival year in Australia of sixty informants
Year arriving Number o f Year arriving Number o f

informants informants
1975 . . . 1 1982 . . . 2
1977 . . . 4 1983 . . . 2
1978 . . . 7 1984 . . . 3
1979 . . . 10 1985 . . . 4
1980 . . . 12 1986 . . . 4
1981 . . . 9 1988 . . . 2
of the total Vietnam-born persons in Victoria. Table 2.3 shows the

language spoken at home and its proportion of the total Vietnam-born
population according to age.
2.5.4 Arrival in Australia

The distribution of ‘year of arrival in Australia’ among the informants is
shown in Table 2.4.
Forty-three informants, representing 72 per cent of the informants, have
been in Australia for more than ten years. The length of residence in
Australia for the remaining informants varied from six to nine years at the
time of the interviews.
40
Chapter 3
Patterns of code-switching
3.1 INTRODUCTION
It was noted in Chapter 1 that several studies of code-switching have paid
attention to the quantification of code-switching patterns with a view to
relating patterns of code-switching to other sociolinguistic factors
(e.g. Berk-Seligson 1986; Gardner-Chloros 1991; Lu 1991; Bentahila
and Davies 1995). In order to determine the possible influence of
sociolinguistic factors, researchers often isolate single variables, such as
age, social status, and correlate these variables with code-switching
patterns (Muysken 1991).
In this chapter, the main focus is on the nature and frequency of
code-switching in the corpus. It will be divided into six main sections. The
first section presents a rudimentary sketch of the structure of Vietnamese
in syntactic terms. This provides the context for an analysis of switching
by word classes found in the interview data. Second, a frequency count of
the code-switching of word classes of each informant is presented to
describe the overall code-switching pattern. In presenting quantitative
aspects of switched word classes, a major part of this section will be taken
up with the description of switched word classes. The third section
concentrates on the discussion of contrasting properties of Vietnamese and
English word classes. Section 3.4 discusses code-switching at the clause
level. The 3.5 section examines the relationship between code-switching
patterns and topics. In Section 3.6, code-switching patterns among the
informants residing in the three selected areas are described. On the basis
of Milroy (1980) who uses the concept of social networks to explain
variation in language use, this section presents a descriptive overview
of the different code-switching patterns, and compares patterns of code
switching between the three sub-groups living in the selected areas of
Footscray, Richmond, and Springvale.
41
PATTERNS OF C O D E -SW IT C H IN G
3.2 GENERAL REMARKS ON SENTENCES IN VIETNAMESE

Systematic study of the Vietnamese language from a syntactic point of
view has been relatively well documented. Until the past few decades,
most syntactic descriptions were written by French scholars (e.g. Cheon
1904; Maspero 1912; Cardiere 1958) and since the second half of this
century, numerous works on Vietnamese grammar written in English have
provided a wealth of material (Robins 1963; Nguy§n Dinh Hoa 1957,
1965; Smalley 1965; Thompson 1987; NguySn Dang Liem 1975, Bisang
1996, among others). These works laid the foundation for study in the field
of Vietnamese linguistics.
In general terms, Vietnamese sentences range from a single word to
lengthy co-ordinate structures of clauses. One of the features of
Vietnamese sentences is that the nominal (subject or object) can be
omitted when it is assumed to be known elsewhere within larger contexts.
That is to say, a sentence depends much on conversational contexts, and is
often a contextually dependent sentence. This general typological
characteristic is also found in some East and South-east Asian languages
(see Huang, C. T. James 1994 and Bisang 1996 for more details). The
following example illustrates how a sentence in Vietnamese is formed:
(1) D ith id i!
Go then go
‘Let’s go!’
This sentence may mean:
• I don’t care if I go.
• If you (he/she/John) go(es) then I go.
• Nothing can stop me from going.
• Let’s go!
• I’m pleased to go.
Thus (1) can be understood in different ways according to the
conversational context. In most of the cases the nominal tagmemes, such
as subject or object, can be omitted when the context permits such an
omission (NguySn Dang Liem 1975). This characteristic remains true in all
features of Vietnamese sentence classes. According to NguySn Dang Liem
(1975: 68-71), there are four types of independent sentences (main clauses)
and two types of dependent sentences (subordinate clauses) in Vietnamese.
The independent sentences do not need to be preceded by anything; that is,
an independent sentence does not require a subject to be qualified as such.
The following examples can serve to illustrate this feature:
42
(2) Declarative sentence: Ong ay di roi.

he that go already
‘He has gone already.’
(3) Imperative sentence: Ong di nhe.

you go PRT
‘You had better go.’
(4) Structurally interrogative sentence: Ong ay di chtra?

he that go yet
‘Did he go yet?’
(5) Intonationally interrogative sentence: Ong khong di a?

you not go PRT
‘You didn’t go, did you?’
Bisang (personal communication) points out that sentences (4) and (5) are
not structurally different. This is because a in (5) does not indicate a
question in the strict sense of the word but rather something like mild
surprise. In his view, ‘a real intonationally interrogative sentence’ should
be marked exclusively by intonation without any additional marker(s).
Thus for (5) to qualify as ‘a real intonationally interrogative sentence’, the
final particle a is not necessary and the main verb di should bear the
highest Vietnamese tone.
Dependent sentences, on the other hand, differ from independent
sentences in that the former needs to be preceded by some linguistic cue
such as prepositional phrases or verb phrases. In all identified types of
sentence, however, there is the possibility of omitting both pronominal
subject or object to serve a pragmatic purpose. Thus, even the single
constituent verb can constitute a well-formed sentence which is still
pragmatically neutral.
A sentence of any structure in Vietnamese can be summarised in the
following formulation:
S ------ > [Nom] + V + [O] + [{F, Q}]
The obligatory element in a sentence is the verb or verb phrase (VP),
optionally preceded by a nominal and followed by an Object (O) and a
final particle (F), or a question marker (Q). The use of square-brackets [ ]
indicates optional elements, and the braces { }, the choice of at least one of
the included optional forms.
As demonstrated in (2) to (5) above, different types of sentences can be
generated from this formulation. The declarative sentence takes neither F
43
nor Q. By contrast, the request or imperative sentence has a similar

structure to that of the interrogative sentence in that it can take either F or
Q-
Basically, it is the SVO order that is the canonical form for Vietnamese
sentences. The literature on Vietnamese often shows that word order is
fairly rigid because it is an uninflected language (see NguySn Tai C in
1975; Thompson 1987). Despite Vietnamese being said to be a SVO
language, there is a source of deviation from this rigid order which results
from what can be labelled topic-prominence (cf. Li and Thompson 1976 in
their study of Mandarin Chinese). This is an important feature of
Vietnamese and seems to be a general characteristic of East and South-east
Asian languages (Bisang 1996). Generally, and in spoken language in
particular, the Vietnamese sentence structure consists of topic-comment.
The topic is either a phrase or a word class which the comment says
something about. In this sense the sentence topic is not necessarily the
subject, nor does it bear any grammatical relation to the comment.
Example (6) demonstrates this feature:
(6) Len Darwin a di may bay nhanh nhat.
up Darwin PRT go plane fastest
‘As far as going to Darwin is concerned, plane is fastest.’
Here, the semantic/pragmatic relation is between len Darwin ‘go to
Darwin’ and the rest of the sentence, where len Darwin is the topic and
the rest of the sentence is the comment (Li and Thompson 1976). In
English, this relation can only be expressed by ‘it is . . . ’ or ‘as far as
. . . ’ To put it differently, in English, it is a grammatical requirement that
every sentence has a subject. But a subject does not necessarily
represent the performer of an action (agent) or what the sentence is
about. When there is no such notational subject present, then the
dummy subject ‘it’ is used, as in ‘It is said’. In Vietnamese, there is no
pronoun corresponding to ‘it’ in this sense, making many sentences
lack an overt subject.
Bisang (personal communication) contends that Vietnamese is not
necessarily a topic-comment language. Rather, the language simply does
not need an overt subject. Its word order would then be ‘TOP SUBJ V ...’
with the subject position sometimes being empty. Bisang’s remarks can be
best illustrated with the following invented examples:
(7) D i chcr a may di dir&ng Church nhanh nhat.
go market PRT you go street Church fast most
‘Church Street is the fastest way you can take to go to the market.’
44
Example (7) overtly marks both topic di chcr ‘go to market’ and the subject
may ‘you’. The subject in this example, however, can be omitted without
changing the speaker’s advice, as shown in (7b):
(7b) D i chcr a di dir&ng Church nhanh nhat.
go market PRT go street Church fast most
‘The fastest way to go to the market is via Church street.’
The brief discussion above indicates that the notion of sentence topic in
Vietnamese is a grammatical notion. It should be distinguished from the
notion of ‘discourse topic’, which refers to the overall topic of a
conversation in the normal sense, and is applicable to all languages. The
notion of sentence topic in Vietnamese is very much similar to that of
sentence topic in Mandarin Chinese, as is introduced by Li and Thompson
(1976). These authors implicitly relate the sentence topic to what is called
‘topicalisation’ to refer to the placement of a word or phrase at the
beginning of a sentence or clause. Basically, Vietnamese is known as a
topic-prominent language. The effect is that any noun can occur in the
topic position, be it an argument (English-style topic) or a non-argument
(Chinese- or Vietnamese-style topic).
The above analysis of the basic similarity and difference between
Vietnamese and English is introduced for later reference in Section 3.6,
which discusses contrasting properties of English and Vietnamese word
classes.
3.3 QUANTIFICATION OF SWITCHED WORD CLASSES

Many instances of code-switching have been recorded in the taped
interviews. Based on the definition of code switching proposed for this
study, there are 3157 code-switches in the corpus.
Table 3.1 displays the distribution of the switched word classes of the
entire 3157 switches in the taped interviews. Overall, Table 3.1 shows that
the most frequent word class of single-word switches is the noun, with
50.61 per cent of the total switches. This finding is relatively similar to
that of other studies with regard to the switching of nouns. Poplack (1980),
for instance, reports in her study on Spanish-English code-switching that
single nouns were more likely to be switched than other word classes. The
noun has been widely cited as a favourable word class for code-switching
(e.g. Pfaff 1979; Berk-Seligson 1986; Poplack and Sankoff 1988;
Nishimura 1985; Nortier 1989; Park 1990; Treffers-Daller 1991).
The other word class that is frequently involved in code-switching is the
verb with 12.35 per cent of the total switches, to be followed in order of
45
Table 3.1 Breakdown of switching by word classes
Word classes Number Percentage

Noun 1598 50.61%
Verb 390 12.35%
Adjective 145 4.60%
Personal pronoun 103 3.26%
Interjection 96 3.04%
Adverb 62 1.96%
Preposition 24 0.77%
Conjunction 18 0.57%
Clause 721 22.84%
Total 3157 100.00%
frequency by adjectives, which constitutes 4.60 per cent of the switches.

Personal pronouns, which occur as often as adjectives and interjections,
account for 103 cases, or 3.26 per cent of the total switches in the corpus.
Adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions constitute 3.33 per cent, whereas
switching at the clause level accounts for 22.84 per cent of the total
switches.
The following sections describe switching by word classes found in the
corpus in order of frequency. The switching of personal pronouns will be
discussed in detail in Chapter 5.
3.4 OVERVIEW DESCRIPTION OF SWITCHED WORD CLASSES

It should be noted here that the examples given below are extracted from
the recorded interviews, and therefore they will serve as examples only. In
each example, the Vietnamese part is in italics. After each example, I give
the code number of the informant who produced the utterance.
3.4.1 Nouns
In the quantification of switched nouns, proper nouns (names of persons,
places, streets, buildings) were excluded. It will be apparent from Table
3.1 that the incidence of code-switching to English nouns is higher than
that of other word classes. This figure, constituting more than 50 per cent
of the total switches, is relatively compatible with that in other studies
(e.g. Poplack 1980; Berk-Seligson 1986; Treffers-Daller 1991).
46
Many of the nouns switched are words which refer to an Australian

context. They can be grouped according to the same semantic categories as
shown in Table 3.2.
3.4.2 Verbs
English verbs comprise 12.35 per cent of the total of 3157 switches. Many
switched verbs were in invariable forms (infinitive without ‘to’ instead of
third person-singular, past or past participle forms).
Verbs refer to daily activities: e.g. ‘shop’, ‘discount’, ‘finish’, ‘clean’.
Some of the verbs were used in relation to the informant’s work
environment including: ‘transfer’, ‘kill’, ‘delete’, ‘fund’, ‘abuse’,
‘organise’, ‘supervise’, ‘refer’, ‘agree’, ‘draft’, ‘turn’, ‘check’, ‘test’,
‘supply’, ‘meet’, ‘order’, ‘apply’, ‘interview’, ‘book’. In description of
book reading, verbs were used to a lesser extent: ‘feel’, ‘gain’, ‘effect’,
‘choose’, ‘retreat’, ‘compare’, ‘pick’, ‘meet’, ‘lose’, ‘suffer’.
‘Pin’, ‘support’, ‘touch’, ‘typify’, ‘enjoy’ etc. were produced while the
informants were describing an Australian scene. The most frequently
switched verbs in the taped interviews are: ‘go’, ‘check’, ‘finish’, ‘pick’,
‘look’, ‘run’.
Table 3.2 Nouns switched by semantic category
Accommodation flat, unit, bedroom, bungalow, house, motel

Landscape town, beach, gum tree, city (80% of the informants),
eucalyptus, park, outback, building, tram
Work-related supervisor, team, office, boss, computer, leave, holiday,
resignation
Food milk, cereal, coffee, ice-cream, dinner, breakfast, lunch
Institution security, CES (Commonwealth Employment Service),
single mother, form, town hall, tax, housing, agent,
police, court, tribunal
Household furniture, kitchen, tap, cook, lamp
Shopping shop, shopping centre, chemist, newsagent, sale,
op-shop
Education Maths, History, English, essay, test, Physics,
assignment, library, drama, book, exam, subject, talk,
high school, uni, distinction, pass, teacher
Australian way of living pub, cricket, football, sport, ground, safari, b.b.q., bush
walking
47
3.4.3 Adjectives
In a thorough study of cross-linguistic adjectives, Dixon (1977) contends
that there are languages in which adjectival meanings are expressed
primarily by nouns and/or by verbs. In Vietnamese, as in a number of
languages discussed by Dixon (1977) and Schachter (1985), there are a
large number of forms which are usually rendered by English adjectives
without copula. For this reason, and in the terms of Schachter (1985),
Vietnamese is an ‘adjectival-verb language’; that is, adjectival meanings
are expressed chiefly by nouns.
The switched adjectives accounted for 4.6 per cent of total switches. The
most widely switched adjectives include: ‘busy’, ‘easy’, ‘interesting’, ‘good’,
‘nice’, ‘silly’, ‘happy’, ‘bitter’, ‘lucky’, ‘sad’, ‘funny’, ‘boring’, ‘beautiful’.
The description of an Australian scene leads to the use of adjectives
such as: ‘small’, ‘familiar’, ‘peaceful’, ‘romantic’, ‘suburban’, ‘typical’.
In other cases, some of the adjectives which occurred refer to work
environment: e.g. ‘sick’, ‘maximum’, ‘industrial’, ‘stupid’, ‘mad’, ‘rude’,
‘ignominious’, ‘special’.
3.4.4 Adverbs
The proportion of the switches that are adverbs is low compared to that of
other word classes. In most cases, the switched English adverbs are placed
at the beginning of the clause. They are: ‘basically’, ‘unfortunately’,
‘actually’, ‘officially’. The most widely switched adverb is ‘very’, which
accounts for 33.87 per cent of the total switched adverbs.
3.4.5 Interjections
The switching of interjections accounts for 3.04 per cent of the total
switches. There is a set of invariable expressions of various kinds switched
by the informants, chiefly by young females under the age of 30 who had
been in Australia for over 10 years, such as ‘Oh my Goodness’, ‘so’,
‘yeah’ (alternatively with ‘yes’). Males also used these expressions but at a
lower rate compared to the females. In a few cases, the male informants
used English obscenities while talking in Vietnamese. Table 3.3 presents
the number of English inteijections in order of frequency.
3.4.6 Conjunctions
Conjunctions comprise only 0.57 per cent of the total switches in my
corpus. Examples of switches involving conjunctions include:
48
Table 3.3 Switching by interjections in order of frequency
English interjections Number o f occurrences

Well 27
You know 19
Yeah 19
You see/see 17
That’s it 5
Oh my goodness/my God 4
No way 3
What a pity 2
96 cases
(8) Bi cà m g ì à AND dèn khi bà di. (70F81F)

FUNC-V flu what PRT and till when she go
‘She had the flu until she went.’
(9) Nó bi hu* cài mat AND lue dó SHE bó nhà. (72F79F)
she FUNC-V damage CLA face and then she leave home
‘Her face was damaged and then she left home.’
(10) Bièt khóng AND nó thày bà già (65M84R)
know not and he see old woman
‘You know and he sees an old woman.’
Clyne (1967) finds that conjunctions are usually a part of speech at which
switching occurs in anticipation of the language used in the rest of the
clause. He also finds that conjunctions are frequently the subject of
switching when sandwiched between two nouns. In my corpus, there are
some cases in which the incidence of switching to English conjunctions
occurs between two nouns, as in the following.
(11) Ho phàn dòi anh AND I DID CHALLENGE THEM. (50M84R)
they oppose me and I did challenge them
‘They opposed me and I did challenge them.’
3.4.7 Prepositions
The occurrence of English prepositions is also low (0.77 per cent)
compared to other word classes. Some of the switched English
49
prepositions have corresponding Vietnamese prepositions with a very

similar meaning. In examples (12) and (13) below, ‘against’ has its
Vietnamese equivalent of chong:
(12) N girai ta AGAINST minh. (70F78S)
people against self
‘People are against us.’
(13) Cdi do AGAINST minh. (57M80R)
CLA there against self
‘That thing is against us.’
3.4.8 Phrase level

Vietnamese and English differ strikingly in that Vietnamese lacks an
article. However, as is shown by Bisang (1996, forthcoming), Vietnamese
has a system of classifiers and demonstratives, and the use of classifiers is
optional depending on the context (for full discussion of the status of
Vietnamese classifiers see Bisang 1996 and forthcoming).
There is not any single article which is switched in the corpus.
Clyne (1967:39) notes that the occurrence of the determiner ‘the’ is
confined to instances of set phrases, as illustrated in the following
examples:
(14) Coi nhir Id THE BEST WAY. (58M83S)
see as be the best way
‘Consider it as the best way.’
(15) Nghia Id THE MOST thoi. (33M75R)
mean be the most only
‘It’s the only way.’
3.5 SWITCHING AT THE CLAUSE LEVEL

Switching at the clause level, which are those involving more than one
word at a time, include: switches between two main clauses, i.e. code
switching occurs at the sentence boundaries between the two languages
(cf. intersentential code-switching); switches between a main and a
dependent clause, i.e. the switched English clause is either a main or a
dependent one; and switches within clauses.
The frequency count of switches at the clause level reveals that there
are 721 switches at the clause level, representing 22.84 per cent of the total
switches.
50
3.5.1 Switches between main clauses

Included in the switching between two main clauses are a few cases
concerning quoted speech which is originally reported in the English
language.
(16) Nó nói IS THIS OPTION STILL AVAILABLE NOW. (50M84R)
he say is this option still available now
‘He said that is this option still available now.’
(17) Anh nói NO THAT'S JUST THE MATTER OF PRINCIPLE. (58M81R)
I say no that’s just the matter of principle
‘I said that no that’s just a matter of principle.’
(18) Mình nói nhir thè này
self say similar-to this
IF THEY HAD HAD CONTACTED ME AFTER THE PRO
GRAMME. (57F81S)
if they had had contacted me after the programme
‘I said something like this: if they had had contacted me after the
programme.’
(19) Nó nói WHY ARE YOU SO DIFFICULT. (50M84R)
he say why are you so difficult
‘He said why are you so difficult.’
(20) Tui nói SIR HAVE YOU EVER WALKED ON THE STREET (60M80S)
I say sir have you ever walked on the street
‘I said, sir have you ever walked on the street.’
Also among switches between main clauses, some constitute more or less
exact repetition of what has just been said in the other language. This can be
partly explained as one of the features of Vietnamese conversational style that
is characterised by frequent repetition of linguistic elements from
immediately preceding utterances as emphatic tie-ins with what follows.
Although this feature of conversational style can be detected in everyday
speech of monolingual Vietnamese, it is interpreted in different ways in the
studies of functions of code-switching by some researchers. For example,
Gumperz (1982) and Saville-Troike (1982) identify a function of code
switching which depends on message repetition. Examples (21-24) below can
therefore be explained by assuming that the interlocutors (i) want to clarify
their message by repeating what has just been said in the other language
(Vietnamese conversational style), and (ii) the code-switching serves the
function of message repetition (Gumperz 1982; Saville-Troike 1982).
51
(21) CAN YOU USE A RIGHT WORD FOR PARTICULAR PART FROM
can you use a right word for particular part from
HOLDEN VEHICLE thay bièt cài
holden vehicle teacher know CLA
này nó kèu là cài gì? (60M81S)
this it call is CLA what
‘Can you use a right word for particular part from Holden vehicle did
he know how to name this one?’
(22) Khi mà mày bài dàu hoc tièng Anh a
when PRT you start learn English PRT
WHEN YOU STARTED LEARNING ENGLISH (59M86S)
when you started learning English
‘When you start learning English when you started learning English.’
(23) OH IT COULD BE VERY COLD ngw&i ta bào thàng Ba
oh it could be very cold people tell March
bà già chèt rét mà. (33M75R)
old woman die cold PRT
‘Oh it could be very cold it is said that in March old women die of
hypothermia.’
(24) Có nhiéu khi em choc thay hoài
has many time I joke teacher/he always
I TRY TO HUMORISE HIM. (67F77F)
I try to humorise him
‘I often make fun of him I try to humorise him.’
Message repetition, quotation function and message qualification (Valdès-
Fallis 1977; Gumperz 1982; Saville-Troike 1982; Grosjean 1982) all may
play a part in causing code-switching between main clauses found in my
interview data. To these one can add the Vietnamese spoken style, which is, as
mentioned above, characterised by frequent repetition of linguistic elements
from immediately preceding utterances to serve an emphatic purpose.
3.5.2 Switching between main and dependent clauses

Switching between main and dependent clauses occurs in my interview data
in a wide variety of grammatical positions. The following are a few examples:
(25) Khi nó bw&c vó I ASK HIM. {6 0M81S)
when he walk in I ask him
‘As he was walking in I asked him.’
52
(26) Chfr sau hai tháng I TELL YOU (56F85R)

wait after two month I tell you
‘Wait for two months then I tell you.’
(27) SO I ’M SO EXCITED nhtrng neu-ma ho cho. (67F77F)
so I’m so excited but if they give
‘So I’m so excited if they give me a go.’
(28) Néu má có nói a
if PRT she say PRT
HER VOICE SOUNDS LIKE PLASTIC MELTING . (70F81F)
her voice sounds like plastic melting
‘When she speaks her voice sounds like plastic melting.’
(29) H E ’S WORKING ON CALL má mot tudn nghi hai ngáy. (66F83F)
he’s working on call but one week off two day
‘He’s working on call but every week he takes two days off.’
Examination of code-switching between main and dependent clauses in
the interview data revealed that none of the switched sentences violate the
syntactic structure of both languages. A possible explanation may be based
on the fact that, as has been mentioned, Vietnamese and English have a
similar word order (SVO), and there is more or less equivalence of word
classes between both languages. As discussed in Chapter 2, Muysken
(1991) introduces the notion of categorical equivalence. This notion is
considered not only as a grammatical notion, but also from the point of
view of psycholinguistics. Under this perspective, a specific word class is
only switchable if it exists in both languages, and it is considered to be
equivalent by speakers of these languages. In Section 3 .6 ,1 shall return to
the notion of ‘categorical equivalence’ when contrasting properties of
Vietnamese and English word classes. Suffice it to say here that the above
examples would render support to the Equivalence Constraint formalised
by Sankoff and Poplack (1981).
In an analysis of code-switching between main and dependent clauses
in Spanish-English code-switching which contains fiPTz-words, Woolford
(1983, 1984) notes that the normal Spanish word order is inverted in
embedded questions. She provides the following examples (Woolford
1984: 78). The Spanish part is in italics.
(a) Do you know what that guy bought?
(b) ¿Sabes tú qué compró ese vato?
Know you what bought that guy?
‘Do you know what that guy bought?’
53
(c) ¿Sabes tú qué ese vato compró?

Know you what that guy bought?
Example (a) shows the English word order pattern, and (b) the order of the
Spanish dependent clause. In (c), Spanish differs from English in requiring
the inversion of subject and verb in embedded questions.
According to Woolford, word order in the dependent clause would be
determined by the Wh-word at the boundary between main and dependent
clause. That is, if the JfTz-word is in English, subject-verb inversion does
not occur, but the Spanish Wh-v¡ová triggers inversion. Thus, (d) and (e)
are possible, whereas (f) and (g) are impossible:
(d) Do you know qué compró ese vato?
‘Do you know what bought that guy?’
(e) Do you know what ese vato compró?
(f) Do you know what compró ese vato?
‘Do you know what bought that guy?’
(g) Do you know qué ese vato compró?
The word order of the dependent clause in (e) is basically English,
although the word classes are all in English. On the grammatical basis of
(e), Woolford notes that the normal Spanish word order is violated due to
the triggering of the English ‘what’.
Examination of the Vietnamese-English data on code-switching
between main and dependent clauses shows that there is no evidence or
counter-evidence for Woolford’s claim. In examples (30) to (34), the word
order of the dependent clause conforms to the structure of both
Vietnamese and English:
(30) Bá phái biet WHEN I TAKE HOLIDAY. (69F78R)
she must know when I take holiday
‘She must know when I take holiday.’
(31) Nó kéu WHO WHO CLEANED OUT M Y DESK. (60M80S)
he shout who who cleaned out my desk
‘He shouted who cleaned out my desk.’
(32) THAT'S WHY I MEAN THAT'S WHY em c it nh& la bin
that’s why I mean that’s why I just remember side
54
cai luat sir cii noi. (70F78S)

CLA lawyer old say
T h a t’s why I mean that’s why I keep remembering what the old
lawyer said.’
(33) Minh dau co nghi ra nhirng-ma
self not have think out but
THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO ASK. (69F78S)
that’s all you need to ask
‘We cannot work it out now but that’s all you need to ask.’
(34) SO I CAN’T SEE WHY may ngirfri do lam kho d i
so I can ’t see why PL people there make difficulty easy
minh. (67F77F)
self
‘So I can’t see why those people are so difficult to us.’
A note on Vietnamese question words (Wh-words in English) is needed
here. Like English, Vietnamese has six question words and different
question words in Vietnamese occupy different positions in the sentence.
Except for tqi sao ‘why’, Vietnamese question words (gi ‘what’; dau
‘where’; the nao ‘how’) always maintain their position at the end of the
sentence. They remain in their original position as a subject, object, or
peripheral constituent. This is a very common areal feature which can be
observed in Chinese (James C. T. Huang 1990) and Thai, Khmer (Bisang
1996). Therefore, on the basis of the grammaticality of (34), the syntactic
position of ‘why’ conforms to the Vietnamese syntactic rule, because ‘why’
(and its Vietnamese equivalent tqi sao ) can be placed at the beginning of
the sentence. In (34), if we replace ‘why’ with tqi sao , the sentence is still
grammatically and semantically correct in both languages; but if ‘why’ is
replaced by another Vietnamese question word, then the word order of the
Vietnamese sentence in (34) will be violated. Only ‘why’ is syntactically
and semantically equivalent to the Vietnamese question word tqi sao.
Switching at ‘why’ is therefore possible because the order of word classes
in both languages is the same. In the light of the equivalence constraint,
switching in (35), an invented example, is impossible:
(35) SO I CAN’T SEE WHAT mayngir&i do lam kho d i minh.
So I can’t see what PL people make difficult easy self
‘So I can’t see what those people are so difficult to us.’
Sentence (35) does not make any sense because the JF/z-word ‘what’ is
sentence-initial. It does not then constitute a meaning to the rest of the
55
sentence. In Vietnamese, one can only say may ngw&i dó lam khó dé minh
cái g i ‘those people make difficulties us w haf. Here, cái g i ‘what’ must be
placed at the end of the sentence. In the light of English, example (35)
conforms to the English syntactic rule but not to the Vietnamese language.
Consider example (36) taken from my corpus:
(36) Em cw hoi luat-sw WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. (69F78R)
you just ask lawyer what you should do
‘Just ask the lawyer what you should do.’
(36) shows that although the word order of both languages is not the same,
it is not violated. The reason is that ‘what you should do’ corresponds to
the Vietnamese Wh-word gi, which remains in its original (postverbal)
position.
The discussion presented above shows that there is no accompanying
syntactic violation at the point of code-switching between main and
dependent clauses in the Vietnamese-English corpus. The word order of
Vietnamese and English remains stable.
3.6 CONTRASTING PROPERTIES OF ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE WORD CLASSES
With respect to the frequency of specific word classes, it has been shown
that single switched nouns (50.61 per cent), verbs (12.35 per cent),
adjectives (4.60 per cent), adverbs (1.96 per cent), prepositions (0.77 per
cent) and conjunctions (0.57 per cent) accounted for 70.86 per cent of the
total switches found in my interview data. These findings seem to suggest
implicitly that certain word classes are more likely to be switched than
others. However, these figures cannot simply be accounted for in terms of
syntactic constraints without taking into account the syntactic systems of
the two languages. Rather, they reflect the high frequency of these word
classes in the speech of the informants. It is therefore necessary to relate
switching rates to systematic aspects of the languages involved. The
following section presents the features of Vietnamese word classes in
contrast to switched English word classes.
3.6.1 Switches of nouns

Like a general typological characteristic of East and Southeast Asian
languages such as Chinese, Thai, Khmer, Hmong, the salient feature of
Vietnamese nouns is that they do not in themselves contain any notion
of number or amount. As the Vietnamese noun has no obligatory marking
56
of singular or plural, and simply has the property of transnumerality, it is

invariant in form. The nouns themselves remain the same regardless of
whether they are singular or plural. In this respect, they are all like
non-count nouns in English such as ‘parking’, ‘smoking’, ‘water’, etc. The
following examples taken from the interview data demonstrate this point:
(37) No Id COMEDY. (56M80S)
it is comedy
‘It is a comedy.’
(38) Chi ddu-phai Id COORDINATOR. (57F79S)
she not be is co-ordinator
‘She is not (a) coordinator.’
(39) May cdi THEATRE do. (65M85F)
PL/some CLA theatre PRT
‘Some theatres.’
(40) Co hai GROUP. (50F86R)
have two group
‘There are two groups.’
(41) No co BOYFRIEND hay la turn lum. (71F81F)
she has boyfriend or is several
‘She has a boyfriend or many.’
(42) Cdc COMMAND. (76M82F)
PL command
‘Some commands.’
(43) Hoc doi v&i toi nhw-ld NIGHTMARE a. (45F81F)
study as for me similar-to nightmare PRT
‘To me, study is a nightmare.’
In the above sentences, all switched English nouns are in singular form
although three of them (39, 40, and 42) are preceded by the indefinite
numeral may ‘an unspecified number generally less than ten’, the unit
number hai ‘two’, and the plural marker cdc ‘all of a given set of entities’
respectively. Bisang (personal communication) suggests that the reason
why all switched English nouns are in singular form may be attributed to
the fact that these forms are simply transnumeral according to Vietnamese
grammar. In addition, the reference of English nouns in (37), (38), (41),
and (43) is vague as they are unspecified nouns according to English
grammar. The ‘boyfriend’ in (41), for instance, may mean a particular
boyfriend or several boyfriends or boyfriends in general. The reference to
57
‘boyfriend’ becomes clear if it is placed in the discourse context of the

sentence.
From the point of view of English, these examples appear to violate
grammatical requirements for Vietnamese, e.g. no explicitly expressed
number (singular vs plural) or reference. In fact, there are no such
grammatical requirements in Vietnamese because the expression of such
grammatical categories is only governed by discourse. In other words, the
discourse context is of paramount importance. Example (44) illustrates
this point:
(44) Ngay horn kia Viet Nam bay tram rir&i. (66M85R)
day before yesterday Vietnam seven hundred half
‘The day before yesterday a Vietnamese won seven hundred and fifty.’
The reference to the subject noun ‘Vietnam’ is vague as it would denote
either a specific Vietnamese or Vietnamese people in general. It should be
noted that there is neither article preceding the noun nor a verb in the
sentence.
Focusing on the structural equivalence and contrast of English and
Vietnamese nouns, it can be seen that both English and Vietnamese nouns
allow premodification with numerals, definite/indefinite articles (for
English) or classifiers (for Vietnamese). However, English and Vietnamese
nouns differ with respect to adjective placement; whereas English allows
prenominal placement, Vietnamese requires modifiers following nouns. In
fact, native speakers of Vietnamese can usually freely choose between a
noun or a verb to insert into a sentence so long as the chosen word best
serves semantic purposes: a particular word - whether it is a noun or a verb
- can be freely used so long as the meaning intention (not the grammatical
intention) is fulfilled. In this sense the Vietnamese can freely select
whether a given lexical item is used in a verbal or in a nominal function. In
other words, the Vietnamese language appears to permit a great deal of
freedom in the selection of either nouns or verbs for syntactic
combination. It is probably this feature, as noted by Thompson (1987),
which often leads native Vietnamese speakers to say that their language
has no grammar.
In code-switching, an English noun can be placed in the syntactic
position of a verb in the sentence. That is, in terms of syntactic structure, it
does not necessarily replace its Vietnamese counterpart. Consider a further
example:
(45) No se ANALYSIS nhir la cong viec
it will analysis like is work
58
thdng nay co dung khong. (63M82F)

fellow this has right not
‘It will analyse the efficiency of this fellow’s work.’
In the above example, ‘analysis’ appears in noun form but is placed in the
position of the main verb according to the SVO word order of both
languages. In this position, the English noun ‘analysis’ is functioning as a
Vietnamese verb, thus violating the equivalence of word order and word
classes proposed in the literature. For example, according to the Sankoff
and Poplack’s (1981) and Sankoff and Mainville’s (1986) formalisations,
there should be a match between the terminal and non-terminal nodes in
the syntactic tree of the languages involved in code-switching. In fact,
example (45) illustrates the point that the informant may not recognise the
word class from the English language, and as may be expected, this
consequently influences the code-switching patterns. This can be further
explained by taking into account the morphological typology of
Vietnamese. As an isolating language, Vietnamese has the potential of
getting access to other linguistic resources without marking the
morphological structure of the target language.
Additional evidence comes from the proportion of bare nouns among
switched English nouns, as the morphological marking of switched
English nouns (e.g. plurals) is not found in the interview data.
Before turning to the omission of obligatory word classes preceding
switched English nouns, such as determiners, in the corpus, let us
compare aspects of specific syntactic word classes, e.g. nouns, between
the two languages. In English, nouns can be preceded by a class of
determiners with respect to their co-occurrence with singular count, plural
count and non-count nouns such as ‘the’, ‘some’, ‘any’, ‘every’, ‘this’,
‘much’. In Vietnamese, apart from the non-existence of an article system,
Vietnamese nouns can nearly always be preceded by any classifiers (e.g.
con ‘living being’; bo ‘set’; cai ‘general classifier preceding most nouns’),
plural markings (nhirng and cdc) or none of these, as is shown in the
following examples:
(46) Ra RIVER chup hinh. (55M86S)
go river take photo
‘Go to the river to take photos.’
(47) Chwa phdi la ENGINEER. (67M79S)
not be is engineer
‘Not yet an engineer.’
59
(48) No la COMEDY. (56M80S)

it is comedy
‘It is a comedy.’
(49) D ay la GUM TREE ne. (70F79F)
this is gum tree PRT
‘This is a gum tree.’
(50) & FITZROY & do co FLAT a roi COUNCIL
in fitzroy in that has flat PRT already council
no rnwo’n. (72M80S)
it rent
‘The council rented a flat in Fitzroy.’
The absence of articles in Vietnamese is maintained when an English noun
is switched. In (46-50), the required articles are omitted, featuring
undetermined nouns from the point of view of English usage. These
English nouns do not themselves designate specific individual items.
However, they are definite nouns from the point of view of the discourse
context.
Similar findings have been reported in other studies of code-switching.
In her study of Spanish-Hebrew code-switching, Berk-Seligson (1986)
reports that there are a number of cases where Spanish indefinite or
definite articles were omitted before a Spanish noun. Ozog (1987), in his
study of Malay-English code-switching, and Park (1990), in his Korean-
English code-switching, also report a similar finding. This may be because
neither Malay nor Korean has an article comparable to English.
This, however, does not always take place, as may be seen in example
(51) below. There is one instance of a single English noun occurring in the
corpus that may deserve attention.
(51) Ba di coi mot HOUSE ha md? (73M80S)
father go see one house QUEST-PRT mother
‘Is dad looking for a house, mum?’
This sentence is produced by a young man (bom in 1973), who asked his
mother while she was interviewed by the researcher. The family migrated
to Melbourne in 1980, and the language spoken in the home is
Vietnamese.
As explained above, Vietnamese nouns can be preceded by classifiers,
or unit numbers, but in a few cases some nouns do not require a unit
number, for example, mua nha (literally ‘buy house’). Usually, the
Vietnamese noun nha simply denotes ‘a residential place’. Native
60
Vietnamese speakers refer to the place where they live in as nha , (be it a
hut or a tent), regardless of the size and type of accommodation such as a
flat, unit, or mansion as in English. To express the meaning in (51), a
standard Vietnamese sentence should have been:
(52) Ba di coi nha ha ma?
In terms of standard Vietnamese, the unit number mot immediately
preceding nha ‘house’ should be omitted as in (52). As a matter of fact, in
(51), mot precedes ‘house’ in the utterance of 73M80S. In order to explain
why the unit number mot is added, it is perhaps worth investigating the
application of the notion of ‘convergence’.
Convergence is highlighted by Clyne (1987a) in his work on German
and Dutch in contact with English in Australia. He finds that ‘(a) the
syntactic system of LI in many individuals converges towards L2, and (b)
syntactic convergence in specific sentences often accompanies code
switching’ (1987a: 750). Clyne supplies evidence from his Dutch-English
corpus, as given in example (h) (Clyne 1987a: example (13)), in which the
subject pronoun is deleted because English and Dutch have different word
orders:
(h) Dan soms times go voor n hour nog in bed
‘Then (I) sometimes go back to bed for an hour’
Standard Dutch: ‘Dan ga ik soms voor een uur nog naar b e d ’
Clyne (1987a: 753) suggests that ‘. .. syntactic convergence will take place
around the switch, apparently in order to ease code-switching’. To put it
the other way around, code-switching is eased by already-existing
syntactic convergence. Thus the dropping of the pronominal subject in
(h), as indicated by Clyne, is a violation of the grammars of Dutch and
English, and is apparently carried out to facilitate code-switching.
It is possible to explain the addition of the unit number mot in (51) in
terms of convergence. Since the addition of mot is a violation of
Vietnamese grammar, it occurs instead as a convergence towards English
grammar for the sake of facilitating a switch using the single English noun
house. Thus, (51) can be seen as an instance of convergence.
3.6.2 Switches of verbs

Vietnamese verbs have several features that are quite different from
English ones. In Vietnamese, concepts expressed by adjectives are
primarily expressed by means of verbs. For that reason, there is no copula
in Vietnamese with words that are adjectives in English: a form of the verb
61
‘be’ (là, thi) can always be omitted before adjectives, making this verb
conveniently rendered by English adjectives: Co dep ‘she pretty’ means
‘she is pretty’; nó tre ‘he young’ means ‘he is young’, and so forth.
The most specific feature of Vietnamese verbs is that they do not in
themselves denote a clear notion of ‘voice’ in the grammatical sense. That
is, there is no necessity to distinguish between an active and a passive verb.
Examples illustrating this feature include:
(53) Hai cài nhà càt gàn nhau.
two CLA house build near one-another
‘Two houses are built near one another.’
(54a) Tho1 càt hai cài nhà.
worker build two CLA house
‘Workers build two houses.’
The above examples show that the actor and the object of the verb are not
formally marked. Both sentences are in the active voice. In (53), the
subject of the verb càt ‘build’ is hai cài nhà ‘two houses’. From the point
of view of English grammar, one might ask: How can a ‘house’ be built by
itself? There must be someone to build the house. But in Vietnamese, (53)
and (54) are complete sentences. There is no difference in meaning
between (53) and (54) although the word order between the two is
different. One reason is that the object of the verb can readily be
topicalised (see Section 3.2), often resulting in a sentence best translated
with an English passive. In short, (53) is a typical sentence which begins
with the object (hai cài nhà) as topic, followed by a verb and no subject.
Turning now to the switched English verbs in the interview data, the
following extracts will show that morphological typology and syntactic
structure of Vietnamese verbs are retained in the switched English
verbs:
(54b) Nó EXTEND them mot tang. (45F79S)
it extend more one storey
‘It is extended by an additional storey.’
(55) Khóng có ai dwac-EXEM PT hèt. (33M75R)
no has someone FUNC-V-exempt FINAL-PRT
‘No one is exempted.’
(56) May ngtr&i bi-TORTURE cùng có nù'a. (69F78R)
PL/some people FUNC-V-torture also have in addition
‘Some of the tortured were also present.’
62
(57) Ong GAIN dirac-POW ER tai-di

he gain FUNC-V-power because
ong co may-ccii MAJORITY SUPPORT. (72M80S)
he has PL-CLA majority support
‘He gained power through the support of the majority.’
As mentioned previously, there is no specific category of voice in
Vietnamese verbs. The function verbs dtrcrc ‘be affected favourably by
some action’ in (55) and (57), and bi ‘be affected adversely by some
action’ in (56) are labelled as passive expressions in traditional grammars.
One may argue that d tra c in (57) may be just the Vietnamese translation
of ‘gain’ and as such it does not have any hints at a passive; therefore
dircrc would constitute repetition of what has just been said in English
(see Section 3.5.1). However, it is necessary to recall that basically,
Vietnamese verbs are in themselves neither active nor passive. They are
employed depending on the following descriptive complement (here
‘exempt’ and ‘gain’denote a favourable action, while ‘torture’ indicates an
adverse action). In either case, they resemble English passive expressions,
and according to English grammatical rules, the main verb should be in
past participle form. Yet, as can be seen, the switched English verbs in
(54-57) appear in bare form, operating in the same way that their
Vietnamese counterparts.
Vietnamese verbs are neutral with regard to tense and other
grammatical functions. This general characteristic is found among East
and mainland South-east Asian languages, and is termed by Bisang (1996)
as ‘indeterminateness’. To express a particular action, a series of actions or
state of affairs, Vietnamese verbs depend entirely on the situational
context for their reference to relative time. In this way the time which has
been made clear in the context serves as the basic time, and the optional
tense markers (se and da for past and future respectively) could be
employed to denote whether an action or state precedes or begins later than
the basic time (Thompson 1987). In this way the tense markers act as
substitutes for the system of verbal tenses in the English language.
3.6.3 Switches of adjectives

The switching of single English adjectives, including switching between
adjectives and nouns, has been well-documented in the code-switching
literature (Pfaff 1979; Poplack 1980; Nortier 1989; Treffers-Daller 1994).
These studies have found that the occurrence of adjectives is most often
found in the predicative position, as shown by Pfaff (1979) in her study of
63
Spanish-English code-switching. Pfaff gives an example of switched

adjectives as follows:
(i) I’m not terca (Pfaff 1979: 305)
‘I’m not stubborn.’
The switching of the Spanish adjective terca can be explained in the light
of the equivalence constraint, i.e. switching is possible when the order of
switched word classes is similar in both languages. Thus, because Spanish
and English adjectives can be in the predicative position, as in (i), the
switching of terca is possible.
With regard to switching of adjectives inside a noun phrase, the
equivalence constraint is upheld in that switching between an adjective and
a noun is possible when the order of adjective and noun is the same in both
languages. Poplack (1980) gives an example of a single Spanish adjective
switching in an English noun phrase as follows:
(j) I got a lotta blanquito friends (Poplack 1980: 600)
‘I got a lotta white friends.’
A similar contrast applies to adjective placement in Vietnamese and
English. In Vietnamese*, adjectives are placed after nouns, whereas in
English, the order is adjective + noun. However, it should be noted that in
recent Vietnamese newspapers published in Vietnam or Australia, there
are a few cases in which a new form of word order resembles the syntactic
structure of the English noun phrase: adjectives are placed before nouns.
For example: trang cao-nguyen ‘white highland’; tw-hao chien th&ng
‘proud victory’. Still, this order may be for stylistic effect, and is unusual
in Vietnamese.
In code-switching use, the switched English adjectives in the corpus
occur both in the attributive position, as in examples (58) and (59), and in
the predicative position, as in examples (60), (61), and (62).
(58) Mot ngwfri LUCKY. (57F79S)
one person lucky
‘A lucky person.’
(59) Giong NATURAL ba. (65M79R)
voice natural she
‘Her natural voice.’
*According to Bisang (personal communication), there are no adjectives in the sense of

English adjectives in Vietnamese.
64
(60) Ngtrfri ta hcri SARCASTIC. (57F81S)

people rather sarcastic
‘People are rather sarcastic.’
(61) No rat SIMPLE. (58M77S)
he very simple
‘He is very simple.’
(62) Anh NICE v&i em thi em NICE v&i anh. (70F78S)
he nice to me then I nice to him
‘If he is nice to me then I’m nice to him.’
Examples (58) and (59) show that the English adjectives are placed after
the Vietnamese nouns. As far as the occurrence of English adjectives in
the corpus are concerned, the position of single English adjectives is
always on the right hand side of Vietnamese nouns. Given this fact, it can
be seen that Poplack’s Equivalence Constraint - that switching between
adjectives and nouns is only possible when the surface order of adjectives
and nouns is the same in both languages - cannot be applied in explaining
switching of adjectives inside a noun phrase.
On the other hand, the structural parallel between Vietnamese and
English adjectives in the predicative position appears to facilitate the
switching by single English adjectives in this position. Examples (60, 61
and 62) show that there is no (Vietnamese) verb in the sentences, making
them appear to be ungrammatical in terms of the word order of both
languages (SVO). As has been mentioned in Section 3.6.2, the verb ‘be’ is
optional. It represents an integral part of a wide semantic range (e.g. la,
thi, bi, <r), making this type of verb conveniently rendered by English
adjectives. With the omission of the copulative verbs, the boundary
between noun and postnominal adjective becomes an equivalence site.
Focusing on switching involving nouns and adjectives, Pfaff (1979)
and Poplack (1980) argue that switches between adjectives and nouns
occur in the Spanish-English case only when the surface word order of an
adjective and a noun is shared by the two languages. Their argument
provides a possible explanation for (60-62) where there is a structural
parallel between Vietnamese and English. Perhaps this is related to the
fact that single English adjectives occur most often in the predicative
position.
In brief, switched English adjectives in the corpus occur in (i) the
combination of noun followed by adjective, and (ii) in the predicative
position.
65
3.6.4 Switches of adverbs

The most frequently used adverbs in Vietnamese are the two intensifiers
rät and lam , both of which have ‘very’ as their English equivalent. Each,
however, appears in different positions:
• rät : a prepositive adverb which precedes its complement.
• lam : a postpositive adverb which does not have its own following
complement.
Table 3.4 summarises the rule for this intensifier placement in English and
Vietnamese.
As in English, these Vietnamese adverbs can modify verbs. Both ‘very’
and rät allow pre-modification, thus emerging as an equivalence site between
both languages. The perfect syntactic congruence between ‘very’ and rät
may contribute to the highly frequent switching of ‘very’ in the corpus:
(63) Ho VERY hien. (70F78S)
they very soft
‘They are very soft.’
(64) Co VERY gian. (72F79F)
she very angry
‘She is very angry.’
As this particular adverb does not bring about structural conflicts in the
above examples, the following type of code-switching was not observed in
the corpus:
Vietnamese adjective + English adverb (very)
tot ‘good’ + very
may ‘lucky’ + very
Another structural equivalence between adverbs of the two languages is
that Vietnamese adverbs may also function as adverbials; that is, they are a
constituent distinct from subject, verb, object, and complement when they
express an evaluation of what is being said with respect to either the form
Table 3.4 Comparison of intensifier adverbs in English and Vietnamese
Language Position 1 Position 1

English very COMPLEMENT X
Vietnamese rät lâm
66
of the communication or to their content. The following extracts

demonstrate this function:
(65) UNFORTUNATELY Id THEY WENT (50M85R)
unfortunately is they went
‘Unfortunately they went.’
(66) BASICALLY Id chi co mot mink (33M75R)
basically is only has one self
‘Basically there is only me.’
(67) ACTUALLY em vira m&i doc. (67F77F)
actually I just only read
‘Actually I’ve just read it.’
The English switched adverbs in (65-67) are positioned in the place of
their corresponding Vietnamese adverbs. It should be noted here that, in the
case of adverbials, while English allows either sentence-final or sentence-
initial, in Vietnamese, the only possible position is sentence-initial.
3.6.5 Switches of prepositions

It is difficult to identify a Vietnamese preposition in the most general
terms as a relation between members of other word-classes. Indeed, it is
generally agreed that in Vietnamese, prepositions are replaced by a series
of verbs; that is, two or more verbs are combined together to express a
relation between themselves or to other sentence elements (Thompson
1987). For example, in English, a verb denoting direction of movement or
some other action is generally modified by an expression specifying
transport of persons or things (e.g. come together). The reverse is true for
Vietnamese verbs. The main verb signals transport, and it is followed by
another verb often with its own complement stating the direction or more
specific action involved. To demonstrate how prepositions are in some
cases perceived as being replaced by a series of verbs, it is perhaps
necessary to present the syntactic structure of a series of verbs in the
Vietnamese language, as shown below:
(68) NP1 VI (NP2) V2 ...
The salient feature of a series of verbs (or ‘serial verbs’, to use the term in
Sebba 1984; Roberts 1985; Nylander 1985, or ‘verb serialization’ in
Bisang 1996) is that a single noun phrase (NP1) acts as the subject of
several verbs (VI, V2), and NP2 is the direct object of VI. In a thorough
study of a comparison of converbal constructions in five South-east Asian
67
languages, Bisang (1996: 533) defines verb serialization as ‘. .. the

unmarked juxtaposition of two or more verbs or verbal phrases (with or
without subject and/or object), each of which would also be able to form a
sentence on its own’. On the basis of his definition, Bisang (1996: 563)
yields the following surface structure of verb serialization:
(NP) V (NP) V (NP) V (NP) V (NP) ...
In terms of syntactic structure, V2 in (68) is often perceived as a preposition,
or a ‘coverb ’ (Clark 1978). Bisang (personal communication), however,
holds that a preposition cannot be a coverb. He points out that a preposition
is a word which has no other function than that of P in a PP. On the other
hand, a coverb is a verb in the function of an adposition, and is always linked
to a more or less homophonous verb. It remains Bisang’s view that as
different coverbs show different degrees of verbal or adpositional properties,
therefore there is a continuum of grammaticalisation from verb to
adposition.
Consider the following examples:
(69) Ho dwa nhau dên chùa.
they accompany/go one-another come temple
‘They go together to the temple.’
(70) Ho công nhau ra cho3 xin an.
they carry one-another go market beg eat
‘They carry each other to the market to beg for food.’
It can be seen that the borderline between prepositions and members of
other word classes is not very clear, especially when prepositions appear
superficially to resemble what appears to be a serial verb. Very briefly,
Vietnamese serial verb structure expresses many of the relationships which
are expressed by prepositions in English.
The structure in (68) is by no means absent in other languages of the
world. Apart from five South-east Asian languages which include Chinese,
Cambodian, Hmong, Thai and Vietnamese as discussed by Bisang (1991,
1996), the literature has shown that in a few African languages,
prepositions and serial verbs may co-occur in a given sentence. For
example, Lord (1973) finds that to indicate an action, Yoruba can use
either a series of verbs, as shown in (k), or a combination of a verb and a
preposition, as in (1).
(k) O f i obs gé era
he took knife cut meat
‘He cut the meat with a knife.’
68
(1) O ge era kpslu dbs

he cut meat with knife
The word order of Yoruba serial verbs and prepositions discussed by Lord
(1973) corresponds entirely to that of Vietnamese, as demonstrated in (71)
and (72) below.
(71) No dung dao cat thit.
he use knife cut meat
‘He uses a knife to cut meat.’
(72) No cat thit bdng dao.
he cut meat with knife
In his study of coverbs’ functions in five languages (Vietnamese, Chinese,
Hmong, Cambodian and Thai), Bisang (1996) shows that Chinese coverbs
occur in front of the main verb, whereas Vietnamese coverbs - with some
exceptions including the coverb dung - appear after the main verb. In
example (71), the Vietnamese coverb dung ‘use’ expresses instrumental
case and occurs before the main verb due to Chinese influence.
It appears that the V2 cat ‘cut’ in (71) has a similar grammatical
function to that of the preposition bdng ‘by/with’ in (72) (see Lord 1973
and Sebba 1984 for discussion of serial verbs, and Bisang 1996 for
coverbs). These examples prove that although the distinction between
prepositions and serial verbs in Vietnamese is not always clear-cut,
Vietnamese prepositions do exist, in contrast to claims in a few previous
studies of the language (e.g. Emeneau 1951; Thompson 1987). The
suggestion that many Vietnamese prepositions should be treated as verbs
may be due to the fact that the language is often examined from the point
of view of French and English grammars. For example, the Vietnamese
preposition & is often classified as a verb because & (meaning ‘to be
located’) expresses a vague meaning of location. In fact, & is equivalent to
its English prepositions ‘in’, ‘at’, or ‘on’ (NguySn Dinh Hoa 1980). Thus
‘a Melbourne’ is ‘in Melbourne’, etc.
Given that prepositions exist in Vietnamese, I now turn to the switches
involving English prepositions in my corpus.
The code-switching literature has shown that the occurrence of single
prepositions in code-switching is quite rare (e.g. Treffers-Daller 1994), or
even non-existent (e.g. Poplack et a l 1988). The reason may be that single
prepositions are governors, and have to be followed by a complement (Di
69
Sciullo et al. 1986). As mentioned in Chapter 1, these authors argue that

coherence relations in grammar make it difficult for code-switching. They
formulate the coherence relations in terms of government, arguing that
code-switching cannot take place between a governor and its complement.
Since the government constraint has turned out to be too strict, Muysken
(1991) introduces the notion o f ‘categorical equivalence’. He suggests that
switching of, for example, a preposition is possible when prepositions exist
in both languages. The notion of ‘categorical equivalence’ seems to be
applicable in explaining the switching of single English prepositions in the
corpus, as Vietnamese prepositions can be considered to be of ‘categorical
equivalence’ to their English counterparts. Consider a few examples of
switching by single English prepositions taken from the corpus:
(73) Ngw&i ta AGAINST minh. (70F78S)
people against self
‘People are against us.’
(74) No AFTER lao dong. (50M85R)
he after labor
‘He’s after the Labor Party.’
(75) Toi phai qua THROUGH cai do thi m&i
I must pass through CLA-there only-then
xong viec. (33M75R)
complete work
‘Only when I go through that thing my work would not be
completed.’
In (73), ‘against’ has its equivalent item chong which in Vietnamese can
function as a verb, or a series of verbs with the omission of the verb thi
‘be’: thi+chong. The (confusing) borderline (from the point of view of
English usage) between a preposition and a verb-series prompts the
informant 70F78S to use the English preposition ‘against’ in substitution
for the equivalent Vietnamese verb series.
A similar explanation can be applied to (74) and (75). In (74), ‘after’ is
used as a verb with the meaning of ‘to be after’, thus appearing
superficially to resemble the serial verbs di+theo (literally ‘go+follow’).
In (75), the switched English preposition ‘through’ is a translation of
Vietnamese verb qua.
The result is that, as would be expected, the corresponding position
between prepositions in both languages makes this word class switchable.
On the basis of preceding analyses, the same can be said for prepositional
phrases in English and Vietnamese as the following illustrates:
70
(76) Theo FROM WHAT I HEARD. (67F77F)

follow from what I heard
‘From what I heard.’
The switch in (76) can also be explained in terms of Vietnamese
conversational style, which is characterised by repetition of a word class or
a phrase from the immediately preceding one as emphatic tie-ins with
what follows (Thompson 1987). In (76), theo literally means ‘following’,
‘according to’ or ‘from’.
3.6.6 Switches of conjunctions

Conjunctions in Vietnamese, like prepositions which they resemble in
having a relating or connecting function, consist of either a single word or
numerous compound morphemes which act like a single conjunction
(Thompson 1987). This feature is shown in (77).
(77) Hàn t&i thì t&i nhirng-má lúe dó tui di rói.
he arrive/come then arrive/come but then I go-PERF
‘He’s welcome to come but I will be away by then.’
As far as the switching of single English conjunctions is concerned, the
syntactic position at which conjunctions occur corresponds to that of
Vietnamese counterparts, as indicated in (78), (79) and (80).
(78) Sau khi hir cái mat AND ba SHE bò di. (72F79F)
after when damage CLA-face and father she leave
‘After her face was damaged and her father left.’
(79) Em muon ké cái chuyen này BECAUSE nó vui
I want tell CLA story this because it fun
quà hà. (69F79R)
very PRT
‘I want to tell you this story because it’s very funny.’
(80) Nó lay tién bà già BUT dó van là an cap. (57F80S)
he take money Mrs old but that still is stealing
‘He took his mother’s money but that act is considered stealing.’
3.6.7 Switches of interjections

Interjections in Vietnamese are less restricted than any other word class in
the positions in which they occur. In some cases, they occur consistently as
71
the whole of a pause group - which is a sequence of syllables occurring

between two pauses without any intervening pause (Thompson 1987). In
fact, many forms which are often called inteijections in particular use
comprise several morphemes. For example, the most common expression
is tôi nghiêp (literally ‘pitiable-karma’), which is actually a compound
morpheme isolated as a pause group.
There are a number of switched English inteijections which are similar
to their Vietnamese counterparts in meaning. Examples of these include:
English Vietnamese
no way vo ph ira n g
my God trfri a i
What a pity tôi qua
These English inteijections, however, were switched at a low proportion

(see Table 3.3).
3.7 CONTEXTUAL PATTERNS OF CODE-SWITCHING

The previous sections of this chapter have presented code-switching from
a mainly structural perspective. The remainder of this chapter will look at
code-switching from a contextual point of view.
Before comparing code-switching patterns across the three sub-groups,
I will describe patterns of code-switching in relation to specific topics
which the informants were discussing.
3.7.1 The influence of subject of discussion on code-switching

As has been discussed in Chapter 2, since the interview situation was well
defined and was identical for each informant, the speech data produced by
different informants is more easily comparable than that in natural
conversations. As has been described in Chapter 2, each informant was
asked similar questions based on the questionnaire (see Appendix 1).
However, it was observed that even within an interview, different subjects
(or topics) induced quite different amounts of code-switching. To see if
specific subjects may relate to code-switching, I made a frequency count of
code-switching produced by the informants while they were describing (1) a
book (or film), (2) a series of typically Australian pictures, (3) their daily
experience at work, and (4) their daily activity at home. The reasons
for which these four subjects have been chosen to compare the frequency of
code-switching are (1) the informants spent a reasonably similar amount
of time talking about these topics (see Table 3.5). By comparing patterns of
72
Table 3.5 Frequency distribution of CS by topics in the interview setting
Topic* Number o f CS Recorded time

(approx.)
1 Description of book, film. 21.51% (679) 10 hours
2 Description of daily work in Australia 16.22% (512) 8 hours
3 Description of Australian picture 12.04% (380) 11 hours
4 Description of activity at respondents’ 6.11% (193) 8 hours
house
*See Appendix 1: Topic 1 related to Questions 14+15; 2: Question 9; 3: Question 22;

4: Question 23.
recorded speech produced over approximately equal lengths of time, we

would consider the time the informants spent on each topic as an
independent variable; and (2) the description of the four selected subjects,
which related to typically Australian scenes, their daily activity at home and
at work, can ‘force the speaker to demonstrate to what extent he/she has
adjusted his/her vocabulary to meet the demands of the new [Australian]
environment’ (Clyne 1967: 23). In view of this, a presentation of the
informants’ speech in relation to their everyday activity may also give us
some general idea about their speech behaviour, and how the Vietnamese-
English bilinguals adjusted to their new environment.
The result of the frequency count of code-switching in each topic
produced by the informants are shown in Table 3.5.
As far as differences are concerned, we can note from Table 3.5 that
there is a steady decrease in the frequency of code-switching as we go
down the list. There are quite considerable differences in the frequency of
code-switching between the topics which the informants were talking
about. In order of frequency, the description of book/film accounts for
21.51 per cent of the total switches in the corpus, followed by the
description of daily activity at work and of an Australian scene with 16.22
per cent and 12.04 per cent respectively, whereas the description of daily
activity at home constitutes only 6.11 per cent of the total switches.
We have controlled the time factor - recordings for each topic were of
almost equal duration, ranging from 8 to 11 hours as indicated in Table
3.5. There is no correlation between the duration of the recordings and the
frequency of code-switching, i.e. the length of the informants’ speeches
does not necessarily result in more code-switches. Given this, the findings
would suggest that all the contrasts can be related to differences in the
description of specific topics. To put it another way, specific topics caused
73
the informants to have different code-switching patterns, or code

switching patterns were to some extent regulated by the different
conventions of conversation.
Indeed, studies on linguistic variation have discussed extensively the
relation of language choice to other factors (e.g. Dorian 1981; Romaine
1995; Gardner-Chloros 1991, among others). However, a look at some
sample discourse produced by my informants on different topics may help
to illustrate the extent to which specific topics have an effect on code
switching. The following extracts are illustrative. The informants’ speech
is in italics.
(81) The informant 65F80R was describing a series of Australian scenes:
Em nghi cay cay E U a cay EUCALYPTUS a cayKkhuynh-diep
I think tree tree Eu PRT tree eucalyptus PRT tree eucalyptus
cay GUM TREE a,
tree gum tree PRT
a cai nay la cai SHOP co ve OLD FASHION sao
PRT CLA this is PRT shop perhaps old fashion why
khong thay ngirfri ta
not see person
WHAT'S THIS SMALL VILLAGE OH NO SMALL TOWN, cai nay
what’s this small village oh no small town, PRT this
la mot cai PARK
is one CLA park
ngw&i ta t&i cho’i PICNIC a, giong nhw may-ngir&i
person come play picnic PRT, similar to PL/some-person
di TOUR chup hinh chung,
go tour take photo each-other,
anh biet loai anh biet hoa RHODODENDRON biet khong
you know kind/type you know flower rhododendron know not
tren nui DANDENONG
on mountain Dandenong
co many, YEAH giong nhu1 mot cai PARK cay nay cay dir a
has PL, yeah similar to one CLA park tree this tree coconut
giong BOTANIC qua ha.
like botanic very PRT
‘I think this tree is a eucalyptus or a gum tree, this one is an old fashioned
shop with no one in it, what’s this, (it’s a) small village, oh no it’s a small
74
town, this is a park where people come for a picnic or they are on tour and
have their photo taken together. You know a flower called Rhododendron
on Mount Dandenong, yeah this park resembles the botanic (gardens) with
a coconut palm, right.’
In contrast, this informant made less use of code-switching when she
was describing her activities at home, as shown in example 82:
(82) The informant 65F80R was talking about her daily work at home:
Thir&ng sau ba g ià tan triràng di ve
Usually after three hour dissolve school go return
dòn hai dira nhò xong cài tam cho con
collect two child little already then bath for child
triróc, xong rói di nàu cam cho con an t&i me an
before, finish already go cook rice for child eat to mother eat
cài bò ve cho bo an
then dad return for dad eat
SO BORING cung ban YEAH VERY BUSY rièu-mà di làm thì
so boring also busy yeah very busy if go work then
bay g ià day roi
seven hour get up already
nèu em ò1 nhà, em khóng di làm a thi em day
if I stay home, I not go work PRT then I get up
WELL con day g ià nào em day g ià dó.
well child get up hour whichever I get up hour that
‘Usually after three in the afternoon (I) went to pick up my two children
from the kindergarten, then gave them a bath, then prepared dinner for the
kids, for me, and for their dad, (it’s) so boring it is very busy, if (I) went to
work (I) had to get up at seven if I was at home I have to, well, get up
whenever the kids wake up.’
Clyne (1967) shows that, when migrants enter Australia, they
encounter a new environment in which English terms and new concepts
are all around them. This indicates that migrants have to use some
English terms with which they were previously not familiar. The extent to
which migrants use terms in other languages depends on various factors;
among these, one would say, is the migrants’ sociolinguistic background.
Given the fact that the Vietnamese are of Asian background, and are
entering a Western environment, like Australia, the new situation with
which they are confronted would be more challenging than that which
migrants of Western background encounter. Given this, the Vietnamese
75
would tend to use English terms in expressing scenes whose Vietnamese

equivalents are not available. This observation seems to be reflected in
the use of code-switching by the informant 65F80R in examples (81) and
(82).
Similarly, a possible explanation can be given for the use of
code-switching in (83). The informant 60M78S was describing his work
experience while he was a public servant in a government department in
Melbourne.
(83) 60M78S was describing his work experience:
Co cai thang trong scr toi ghet
have CLA fellow in
office me hate
goi anh la MATE lam anh ghet lam , may thing kia
call him is mate very he hate very, some/PL fellow that
GOOD DAY MATE anhkeu
good day mate he shout
YOU KNOW WHO’S YOU TALKING TO tao la xep cua may
you know who’s you talking to I is boss of some/PL
thing kia SORRY, tui dung may cai ma LANGUAGE nay kia
fellow there sorry, I use PL CLA PRT language this that
anh khong chiu,
he not accept
anh muon dir a cai EVIDENCE ra la tui ABUSE anh tire la
he want bring CLA evidence out is I abuse him meaning
cai ATTITUDE cua toi
CLA attitude of me
lam viec la nhw vay anh muon CONVINCE ong chanh an
work is as such he want convince Mr judge
la cai PERSONALITY
is CLA personality
cua minh cai ATTITUDE cua minh SHIT MAN.
of self CLA attitude of self shit man
‘There was a guy in my office who hated someone calling him mate, when
someone greeted him “good day mate”, he groaned you know who you’re
talking to I’m your boss, some had to apologise to him, he told me that
sometime I talked with staff using too informal a language, such as when
I had a break and talked to staff in a dining room I swore or said something
like that, he hated the way I spoke and sued me, he wanted to prove that
76
I had abused him, that means my attitude in the office is unacceptable, he

wanted to convince a judge that there is a problem with my personality, my
attitude, shit man.’
Here frequent but brief switches to English seem to be a basic pattern of
this discourse. The informant 60M78S used a few typically Australian-
English expressions (e.g. mate, good day mate) which reflect the fact that
these expressions do not have corresponding Vietnamese ones. This also
happened when this informant was describing a picture of an Australian
scene, as in example (84).
(84) 60M78S was describing a picture:
Nay la khach san, tui nghT no muon noi cai LOCATION cua no
Here is hotel, I think it want say CLA location of it
cai FACILITY no co
CLA facility it has
nhirng-ma cai LOCATION cai VIEW cua no,

but CLA location CLA view of it,
ro rang thay anh SHOW OFF cai VIEW
obviously see it show of CLA view
cua anh, anh muon noi la cai HOTEL cua anh ngoai
of it, it want say is CLA hotel of it besides
nhwng cai FACILITY nhwng cai HOTEL
PL CLA facility PL CLA hotel
khac co anh con dac biet hojn la cai VIEW cua anh,
different have it also special more is CLA view of it,
anh con THE BEST LOCATION
it also the best location
thay chira ca tung CUR CURTAIN d. ma HOTEL nao

see yet applause cur curtain f ... hotel whichever
FIVE STAR chdng co, dung khong.
five star not has, right not
‘This is a hotel, I think they just want to show that the best thing about it is
the location and its facilities, obviously what they want to show off is its
view, f ... tell me which five star hotel does not has curtain, right.’
The same can be said of the patterns of code-switching in (85). Here,
English seems to be a source of vocabulary in that the same informant
used English terms where no direct equivalents exist in Vietnamese (e.g.
family payment).
77
(85) 60M78S was talking about his source of income:

C it hai tuan tra cho cai no goi la FA FAMILY a
every two week pay for CLA it call is fa family PRT
ALLOWANCE chit g i FAMILY
allowance FINAL-PRT family
PAYMENT thi no cho ong nhirng-ma

payment then it give you but
cai ADDITIONAL FAMILY PAYMENT d md
CLA additional family payment f ...
cai do m&i nhieu.

CLA there will be a lot
‘Every two weeks the government pays something called Family

Allowance, the amount paid under the Additional Family Payment is a
lot.’
The presence of English lexical items indicates that the informants are
confronted with a new source of vocabulary whose Vietnamese
equivalents are not freely available. This would coincide with the findings
of Clyne (1967: 70), who shows that general terminology such as
occupation, type of work, products and the like are usually switched.
Clyne also reports in his study that ‘several informants were unable to
translate the name of their occupation’. The informants in this study had a
similar problem while they were talking about their work.
In addition to this, the much more frequent use of code-switching in
the discussion of the book than in that of other topics also concurs with
Romaine’s findings in her Bilingualism (1995). Romaine finds that
code-switching in a reported speech is usually in a different language
which is related to the setting about which the speaker was talking.
Romaine (1995: 162) notes: ‘. .. a young Papua New Guinea girl
narrating the story of a cartoon she has just seen on the video told it to
me in Tok Pisin, but reported the “speech” of one of the characters in
English ... her choice of English is socially appropriate because the
cartoon characters are white, the setting is obviously not Papua New
Guinea . . . ’
Romaine’s accounts provide a good explanation for the high proportion
of code-switching produced by my informants in their description of a
book or a film. The setting and the characters of a story are English, which
by and large induce the informants to make use of code-switching.
Example (86) is illustrative.
78
(86) The informant 70F79F was narrating a story:

Co nay bi me bo vo BOYS SCHOOL , moi thang
she this FUNC-V mother leave into boys school, every month
me co viet thir
mother she write letter
cho cd kiiu ma me co FEEL GUILTY a
to she sort of mother she feel guilty PRT
nhwng-md THEN SHE SHE KIND OF LIKE
but then she she kind of like
khong co noi chuyen nira, SHE tit
not has tell story anymore, she oneself
PU T HERSELF PU T HERSELF INTO
put herself put herself into
THE SHELL co viet cai DIARY ONE TIME a SHE vo
the shell she write CLA diary one time PRT she into
cai l&p ENGLISH
CLA class English
SHE THE NEXT YEAR a SHE WENT TO THIS ENGLISH
she the next year PRT she went to this English
hm CLASS AND,
hm class and,
a MR LAURICE ENGLISH TEACHER a cai ong
PRT-then Mr Laurice English teacher PRT then he
m&i dwa ra cai de nghi la moi ngir&i co cai DIARY.
only bring out CLA suggestion is each person has CLA diary
‘There was a girl who was forced to enrol in a boys’ school by her mother.
This made her mother feel guilty though her mother wrote to her every
month. The girl did not like talking to people, she put herself into a shell.
She had a diary. One time she got in an English class where she met with
her English teacher, Mr Laurice, who suggested that everyone should have
a diary.’
Many studies have shown that situational factors such as setting and topic
do influence speakers’ language behaviour to some extent (e.g. Gal 1979;
Milroy 1987). However, this is not always the case, as others have also
shown that it is the interlocutor who determines patterns of language choice
(e.g. Bell 1984; Li 1988). For example, in a study of a Chinese-English
79
PATTERNS OF CODE-SWITCHING
bilingual student community in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, Li Wei

(1988) tests the effects of interlocutor, topic and setting upon patterns of
language choice. He finds that his informants made and varied their choice
of language in accordance with the identity of the addressee, regardless of
setting and topic.
To sum up, the contrasts between the proportions of code-switching
suggest the possibility that there is a correlation between code-switching
patterns and specific topics that the informants were talking about.
Specifically, the English setting ‘triggers’ code-switching (Clyne 1967).
Figure 3.1 indicates the relationship between code-switching and specific
topics.
3.7.2 Code-switching across the three sub-groups

We will now compare the results of switched word classes by the
informants residing in the three selected areas: Footscray, Richmond, and
Springvale (see Chapter 2 for the description of the groups). This section
uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative
methods are used to indicate the distribution of switched word classes
across the three sub-groups, and qualitative approaches take account of
sociolinguistic factors that may influence patterns of code-switching. These
two approaches are presented in Sections 3.7.2.1 and 3.7.2.2 below.
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
1 Description 2 Description of 3 Description of 4 Description
of book, film daily work in picture in Australia of activity
Australia at respondents’ home
Figure 3.1 Incidence of code-switching by topics
80
3.7.2.1 Statistical analysis
To compare the occurrence of code-switching across the three sub

groups, the following procedure has been applied. I undertook a
frequency count of switching by word classes produced by each informant
residing in a respective area (Footscray, Richmond, and Springvale). The
count resulted in three sets of data. The first data set comprises instances
of code-switching by informants in Footscray; the second set consists of
code-switching by informants in Richmond; and the third set consists of
code-switching by informants living in the Springvale area. All the
occurrence of switching by word classes by each sub-group are listed in
Table 3.6.
Table 3.6 indicates the extent of the differences and similarities in
switching by word classes between the three sub-groups. In terms of the
number of instances of code-switching, it appears that the speech
behaviour of the informants in these three areas is relatively similar to
one another, and no switched word classes are unique to any sub-group as
it actually occurs in the speech of the three sub-groups.
However, the raw data given in Table 3.6 serves a limited function of
giving us an overall picture of variation in the incidence of code-switching,
as well as allowing us to have some idea of code-switching patterns across
the three sub-groups. In order to make a claim about how different
switching by word classes is between the three sub-groups, an appropriate
Table 3.6 Switching by word classes of the three sub-groups
Switched word classes No. o f occurrences

Footscray Richmond Springvale
Noun 578 461 559
Verb 127 112 151
Adjective 56 40 49
Adverb 21 16 25
Pronoun 36 40 27
Preposition 8 4 12
Conjunction 6 4 8
At the clause level 215 257 249
Total 1079 959 1119
(34.18%) (30.38%) (35.44%)
81
statistical procedure was employed. For frequency data, a Chi-square (%2)

analysis was applied (Mullineaux 1981). In general terms, %2 is a statistical
test to help decide if the differences in switching by word classes between
the three sub-groups are significant. The results of %2 are 24.86 (df =16,
p>.05). That is, the three sub-groups differ in their switching of word
classes, but the difference is statistically insignificant if significance is set
at the .05 level.
Why there should be such a similarity in terms of the occurrence of
code-switching among the three regionally different groups can be
interpreted in a discussion of immigrant minorities (Kerswill 1994), which
is presented in the next section.
3.7.2.2 Discussion
Sociolinguists have often discussed the relationship between social and

linguistic factors with a claim that both sociolinguistic and typological
factors may influence code-switching patterns. The relationship between
social and linguistic factors has often been demonstrated by grouping
individuals according to factors such as social class, gender and age, and
then by looking at what linguistic features are correlated with each group
(Romaine 1994: 69). Romaine (1994) also notes that of the social factors,
the importance of social class for language has long been recognised, as
researchers have demonstrated that linguistic features are a reflection of
social class. Labov’s (1963) The Social Motivation o f a Sound Change, can
serve as a social approach to language use by a particular social group.
Milroy (1982: 209), for example, contends that: ‘Always there are
linguistic hierarchies which correspond to social hierarchies, and the
persons of highest status with the greatest potential for exercising power
are always the speakers of the linguistic variety which is judged to be the
most beautiful, logical, and comprehensible’.
However, as indicated by Romaine (1994), researchers have not always
been satisfied with social class-based approaches to language use because
there is to a certain extent variation among individuals of the same social
class. For this reason, some have sought ways to describe what linguistic
patterns emerge within social classes. This has led to the development of
the concept of social network which ‘takes into account different
socialising habits of individuals and their degree of involvement’ in a
particular social group (Romaine 1994: 81-2).
As mentioned in Chapter 1, social factors, such as economic and
political ones, are used as criteria to measure the degree to which these
factors are correlated with speech behaviour. For example, in her study of
82
working-class communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Milroy (1980)

selects iocal cultural categories’ (1980: 198) as criteria to come to a score
which reflects the degree of the ties which her informant contracts with
others. Milroy claims that the network score is in fact correlated with
linguistic variables. Similar findings are obtained in the study of Sylheti-
speaking Bangladeshi workers in London by Smith (1984). Smith finds
that language use among these workers depends on their social and
economic situations in London.
The network approach was also used in the study of language use in
immigrant communities. Romaine (1994) points out that the use of network
as an analytical construct can be applied equally well to multilingual and
monolingual settings. For example, in a recent study of the Chinese-English
speaking community in Tyneside, north-eastern England, Milroy and Li
(1995) show that the network approach can improve our understanding of
patterns of code-switching occurring in the immigrant community such as
the Tyneside Chinese they were investigating. Introducing different types
of network to help account for the speech of this immigrant group, Milroy
and Li argue that network type, for instance, the economic dependence on
the catering trade in the Tyneside community, can predict fairly well
patterns of the minority’s speech (see also Li Wei 1995).
It appears that network structure is a relevant notion which can be used
as a social perspective to interpret patterns of code-switching of the
Melbourne Vietnamese under consideration. In the small ethnic community
of the Melbourne Vietnamese, many contract quite similar kinds of
interpersonal network ties which give primacy to the mutual dependence
on economic, political and socio-cultural activities. Indeed, I observe two
basic patterns of interaction and informal social organisation in the
Melbourne Vietnamese community:
(i) Apart from the fact that the majority of the Melbourne Vietnamese
earn their living from making clothes at home relying almost
exclusively on family labour, others try to obtain capital not by relying
on borrowing money from formal financial institutions (e.g. banks),
but on their own informal financial networks created by themselves:
The ‘hui network’. This type of network involves different people of
all walks of life who might reside in different areas. This pattern of
informal organisation can be said to be relevant to an ‘exchange
network’ (Milardo 1988: 26-36), whose members are in frequent
contact and have strong ties to enforce social norms.
(ii) Another type of network ties can relate to the political and cultural
roles which the Melbourne Vietnamese play in their community. Their
83
PATTERNS OF CODE-SWITCHING
various roles are expressed in the main social events such as the Tet
festival (Vietnamese New Year). To organise such an important event
and during the event, many are in regular contact and exchange ideas,
advice, support, etc., over prolonged periods of time.
The interactional network ties described above may give an indication of
the quantitative patterns of code-switching of the three groups under study.
Figure 3.2 illustrates the quantitative patterns of code-switching of the
three sub-groups.
Several studies of the language use of immigrant groups (e.g. Pfaff
1979; Poplack 1980) suggest that immigrants have certain linguistic norms
which may involve code-switching and borrowing. Poplack (1980) in her
study of Puerto Ricans in New York, indicates that an immigrant group
switches codes to form an ‘overall discourse MODE’ (1980: 614,
emphasis in original). She observes that code-switching as a norm occurs
less frequently when the interlocutor is not a member of the identified
group. In relation to a study of rural speech in urban Norway, Kerswill
(1994: 22) also states that ‘A minority group may develop its own
linguistic norms (which may include code-switching and borrowing), but
only if its members have frequent contact with each other and there is
some stability and continuity’.
600
Footscray
500 Richmond
Springvale
400
300
200
100
I
c c
It l
3 € 1i ■<De o § 8 ®
O
Z 1 CO
■D a 3
0
< 2. - 2 'C
Q. o 1
O 5c
Figure 3.2 Comparison of code-switching patterns by the three sub-groups
84
The findings of Poplack’s and Kerswill’s studies may apply to the three
Vietnamese sub-groups with respect to similar quantitative patterns of
code-switching. If norm is understood in the sense that it is something that
is shared among the speakers, then to some extent the occurrence of code
switching in the speech of the three sub-groups may be considered as a
kind of linguistic norm, and can be seen as an unmarked choice (Myers-
Scotton 1993a). This idea is in fact suggested in a number of studies of
immigrant communities (e.g. Pfaff 1979; Poplack 1980; Kerswill 1994).
These studies argue that various forms of linguistic behaviour, including
code-switching, function as a linguistic norm in that they are the unmarked
mode of speech. In relative terms, the code-switching of the three groups
suggests that the phenomenon of code-switching may not simply be a
norm for them, but it may be an integral part of their bilingual repertoire.
3.8 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we have seen that single words are switched more often
than entire clauses. A possible explanation can be that single words such as
nouns, verbs or adjectives exist in both languages, and more importantly,
are considered as ‘categorical equivalent’ (Muysken 1991, 1995). In a new
perspective on code-switching, Muysken proposes that one of the
important conditions for switching of single words is that the switched
word classes are considered as equivalents by speakers of the languages
involved. Muysken calls this condition as ‘switching under equivalence’.
Generally, focusing on the structural equivalence and contrast of word
classes in both languages, it has been revealed that English switched word
classes are patterned like the structure of their Vietnamese counterparts,
and occur overwhelmingly according to the word order of the Vietnamese
language. Given the surface similarities between the word order in both
languages, most switches occur at points around which the word order of
the two languages corresponds.
Specifically, it was shown that different syntactic word classes switch at
different rates. For example, switches of nouns are most common. By
contrast, there is no single switched article occurring in the data. There is
the possibility that these results could be due to structural equivalence and
contrast between the two languages.
The conclusion, once again, must be that categorical and word order
equivalence between the two languages (Muysken 1991, 1995; Pfaff 1979;
Poplack 1980) play an important role in inducing code-switching.
It has also been shown in this chapter that the informants in the three
areas of Melbourne engage in code-switching and that they all make use of
85
similar types of code-switching. Using the %2 formula to determine the

variation patterns across the three sub-groups, it was found that there are
no statistically significant differences distinguishing the groups in terms of
the quantitative patterns of code-switching (p>05). This may be due to
the likelihood that Vietnamese-English bilinguals in these areas are
involved in similar types of interpersonal networks, and are in frequent
contact with one another. In addition, the similarities between the
sociolinguistic situation in these areas may account for the identified
patterns of code-switching.
86
Chapter 4
Tonal facilitation of
code-switching
4.1 INTRODUCTION
It has been noted in Chapter 1 that the explanations for code-switching are
as diverse as the approaches which researchers take in examining
code-switching behaviour. The study of code-switching has particularly
benefited from such an interdisciplinary perspective as every facet of the
issue is dealt with in the light of existing sub-disciplines of linguistics,
sociology, and psychology.
In view of this perspective, this chapter attempts to describe code
switching with the specific data of English and Vietnamese with special
focus on Vietnamese tones.
It has been recognised that although tone in Vietnamese does not have a
role in the expression of grammatical relations, it plays an important role
in distinguishing lexical items in the Vietnamese language. To a certain
extent there are intriguing relationships between tones. It may be of
necessity to see how Vietnamese tones are perceptually interpreted by
Vietnamese speakers and to discover how Vietnamese tones interact with
English stresses in code-switching.
This chapter is organised as follows. First, it will show the process of
word-combination in Vietnamese which usually observes tone relationships,
and describe various aspects of Vietnamese tones. The purpose is to
present the system of phonologically distinctive tones in order to provide
answers to a specific question. How do tonal features interact with each
other?
Second, the major part of this chapter will be devoted to a descriptive
analysis of Vietnamese tones at the point of switch (henceforth
abbreviated as switch point). For the purpose of addressing the specific
question of whether tones play a role in facilitating code-switching, it will
examine phonetic and perceptual features of Vietnamese tones and
compare them with English stresses in terms of their linguistic
plausibility. It will be shown that due to certain factors associated with
87
TONAL FACILITATION OF C O D E -SW IT C H IN G
tones, the proportion of some tones is higher than that of others at switch
points.
In fact, Vietnamese tones have been examined in previous studies
(Le Vän Ly 1948; Haudricourt 1954; Johns and Huynh 1960; Robins
1963; Smalley 1965; Shum 1965; NguySn Bäng Liem 1970; Ross 1971;
Nguy§n Binh Hoa 1967; Le Ba Thao 1973; Hoäng Tue and Hoang Minh
1975; Doan Thien Thuat 1977; VÜ Thanh Phirong 1981, 1982; Thompson
1987). These studies focus mainly on two major points: the functions of
tones at lexical and semantic levels, and the number of tones in the
Vietnamese language.
Insofar as the study of Vietnamese tones is concerned, these studies,
with few exceptions, are purely descriptive; only a small number were
carried out based on experimental analysis (Andreev and Gordina 1957;
Trän Hirong Mai 1969; VÜ Thanh Phirong 1981). No study is concerned
with the issue of how Vietnamese tones operate in a linguistic environment
involving English words. This chapter attempts to address this issue. To
begin with, I shall sketch aspects of Vietnamese morphological processes.
Section 4.2 below will give the reader a general idea of how Vietnamese
words are formed with regard to tone features.
4.2 MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

A matter of controversy with regard to the description of Vietnamese is
whether it is a mono- or polysyllabic language. Traditionally each
Vietnamese syllable has been regarded as a word, for a large proportion of
Vietnamese words consist of only one syllable. But there are also very
obvious indivisible forms - morphemes - consisting of more than one
syllable. In many cases each element in these polysyllabic forms has no
meaning in its own right. It is then necessary to recognise different types
of morphemes in terms of their morphological class; that is, they can be
classified according to their consonants, vocalics and tones.
With regard to the grammatical relationships of elements below the
word level, Vietnamese words may contain either (1) a single free
morpheme; or (2) basic free forms containing bound morphemes; or
(3) basic free forms consisting of one free morpheme and one or more
bound morphemes; or (4) basic free forms consisting of two free
morphemes.
In English, when a new word is formed by conjoining the existing word
or morpheme to other word(s) or morpheme(s) it is called a derivational
morpheme. This process has similarities and differences with Vietnamese.
In the first place, a Vietnamese indivisible unit may not convey any
meaning by itself. Second, a new word or morpheme is derived in harmony

with the sound of the base with which it occurs; that is, the new morpheme
has some kind of consistent phonological resemblance to its base(s), as
shown in the following examples:
(a) khóc lóc ‘whimper’, ‘cry’ (base khóc ‘weep’)
(b) do do ‘fairly red’ (base do ‘red’)
(c) nói nói ‘keep talking and talking’ (base nói ‘talk’)
In the above examples, consonantal alteration occurs in (a), tonal change
occurs in (b), and (c) bears exactly the same phonetic shape as the base.
These examples are known under the term of ‘reduplication’ (Thompson
1987: 119).
The repetition of all or part of a base either with or without vocalic or
consonantal change plays an important role in Vietnamese word formation
and phrase structure. As a general principle, the vowel of a base can
harmonise with either its preceding or following syllable. While this
feature is by no means rare among the world’s languages, the agreement in
vowels in Vietnamese may provide some insight into the nature of possible
combinations of Vietnamese and English vowels.
In the following sections, it will be shown that the principle of tone
relationships plays a role in Vietnamese-English code-switching.
4.3 THE VIETNAMESE TONE SYSTEM

There is general agreement in the tonal literature that the phonetic features
of tone are associated with the domain of pitch. According to Gandour
(1978), the term ‘tone’ refers to a particular way in which pitch is utilised
in language; the term ‘pitch’ refers to how a hearer places a sound on a
scale ranging from low to high. Having assumed the principal factors
associated with tone as the prelude to the study of tonal languages of the
world, many authors agreed that a tonal language is a language in which
pitch is used to contrast individual lexical items or words. This definition
excludes intonation languages, such as English, in which pitch is used to
indicate syntactic and/or semantic distinctions at the phrase or sentence
level (Pike 1948; Ladefoged 1962; Wang 1967; Gandour 1978).
On the basis of the definition of (non-)tonal languages given in the
literature, English and Vietnamese may be distinguished in terms of how
pitch variations convey linguistic information. In English, pitch variations
affect the meaning of syntactic components of an utterance. In
Vietnamese, however, pitch contours differentiate words. To put it
differently, pitch variations in English do not distinguish monosyllabic
89
lexical items while they do in Vietnamese. Based on these different

features of pitch, and in the sense that a tonal language has ‘lexically
significant, contrastive, but relative pitch on each syllable’ as defined by
Pike (1948: 3), Vietnamese is classified as a tonal language.
4.3.1 Descriptive framework and definition of terms

As far as the descriptions of Vietnamese tones are concerned, there is a
discrepancy in the number of tones which may reflect differences in the
nature and perception of tones. Emeneau (1951), Nguyên Dinh Hoa
(1967), Johns and Huynh (1960) divide Vietnamese tones into three pitch
levels: high, medium, and low. According to those authors, Tone sâc is
described as high level, Tone ngang and Tone ngâ medium level, Tone
huyên, Tone hoi and Tone nang low level. Thompson (1987) groups
Vietnamese tones into four pitch levels: high (Tone sâc and Tone ngâ),
high-mid (Tone ngang), mid-low (Tone hoi), and low (Tone huyên and
Tone nang). The differences in describing the tone levels are shown in
Table 4.1.
The discrepancy in the descriptions of the tonal levels poses a special
question of how many tonal levels need to be distinguished in the
Vietnamese tonal system. It appears that there is a need to employ an
adequate system which would be able to make a major distinction between
tonal features. In fact, many studies on tonal languages have normally
distinguished tones in terms of pitch level. Pike (1948), for example,
suggests that a distinction should be made between tones which are simply
a consequence of the combination of more than one pitch level, and tones
which are the glides themselves. In other words, any tone can be
adequately described in phonetic terms by specifying features for glide
Table 4.1 Comparative descriptions of Vietnamese tone
Name o f tone Nguyên (1967), Emeneau Thompson

Johns and Huynh (1960) (1951) (1987)
Tone sac High level High rising High level
Tone ngang Medium level High level High-mid
Tone huyên Low Low falling Low
Tone ngä Medium Creaky level High
Tone hoi Low Creaky falling Mid-low
Tone nang Low Low Low
90
TONAL FA CILITATION OF C O D E -SW IT C H IN G
tone which is distinct from level tone. On the other hand, other authors
have employed various sets of features to represent the number of tones. In
his study of Cantonese Chinese, Chao (1947) employs a five-level system
for the phonetic description of tones. He describes each of the six tones in
Cantonese with a numerical value, which represents the height of the tone
(phonetic pitch value) and the direction of movement of the tone. A value
of 1 represents the lowest phonetic value, and higher pitch values can be
represented with progressively higher numbers up to the value of five.
Chao’s system has been employed in several studies on tonal languages
(Williamson 1970; Fromkin 1972; Peters 1973; Clifton 1976; Anderson
1978). Chao’s system is presented in Table 4.2.
Chao’s (1947) scale is interpreted as follows: tone 55 (Tone 1) begins at
the highest level and remains at that level; 35 begins in the middle of the
scale and rises to high; 21 begins below mid and falls to low, and so on.
Chao’s system of six distinct tone levels provides for the specification
of six tone levels, but the fact is that the range of phonetically
distinguishable tones is not limited to Chao’s scale of five values (from
1 to 5). In Anderson’s own words: ‘It [the Chao system] is in principle
simply a notational convenience when interpreted phonetically ... the
actual range of phonetically distinguishable tones is not limited to five
values’ (Anderson 1978: 141). In an attempt to provide a universal
representation of distinct tones for tonal languages, many have proposed
various sets of features in substitution for Chao’s (1947) system (Wang
1967; Sampson 1969; Woo 1969; Maddieson 1972). The similarities of the
cited studies is twofold. In the first place, they all attempt to describe tone
levels in terms of a set of features with binary values; on the other hand, it
appears that there is no single system superior to others in terms of being
able to provide an accurate description of distinct tones in all tonal
languages of the world.’ One can therefore make a conclusion from the
literature that different languages require different sets of features which
Table 4.2 Pitch values in Cantonese tones
Name o f tone Chao s notation

1 55
2 35
3 33
4 21
5 23
6 22
91
should be proposed in accordance with the characteristics of individual

languages. With this in mind, I now turn to the description of Vietnamese
tones.
4.3.2 Tone names and features

In its basic structure, the Vietnamese language is generally considered
homogeneous despite some variations occurring in the realm of phonology
and phonetics. In consideration of the number of dialects, many linguists
agree that Vietnamese has three main dialects: the Northern, the Central
and the Southern (Lê Bâ Thâo 1973; Vü Thanh Phircmg 1981, 1982;
Thompson 1987, among others). Northern Vietnamese has six phonological
tones, Central and Southern Vietnamese each have one tone less because
the fourth and the fifth tones (Tones Ngâ and Hoi respectively) bear a
similar phonetical feature (Emeneau 1951; Dirong Thanh Binh 1971, see
Table 4.1). Thus, only Tone 4 occurs as a separate tone in the Northern
region. This slight variation in Vietnamese phonology leads many to the
conclusion that the tones in one dialect can be readily identified by
speakers of other dialects; and such an identification of the tones leads to
mutual intelligibility between speakers of Vietnamese.
In terms of standardisation, all investigations of Vietnamese tones have
agreed that the Vietnamese language has six tones which distinguish the
meaning of utterance and are represented by the standard orthography: one
tone is unmarked, four are represented by diacritics written over a vowel of
the syllable, and the last by a dot under a vowel of the syllable. In this
study, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, I assign here to each of the
tones a numerical value which captures the pitch height of the tone as
follows: Sâc: Tone 1; N gang : Tone 2; Huyên : Tone 3; N gâ : Tone 4; Hoi :
Tone 5; N ang : Tone 6. Table 4.3 presents the Vietnamese tone system in a
comparative chart. The English descriptions are taken from Emeneau
(1951) and Thompson (1987) with some modification, and preferred to
others (Boàn Thiên Thuât 1977; Vü Thanh Phircmg 1982) because they
are informative and able to help the reader visualise typological features of
the tones. The phonological names are taken from official spelling
vocabulary with the addition of the numerical value. For notational
convenience, the numerical value will substitute for the phonological name
and will be used throughout this chapter.
As mentioned in 4.3.1, Pike (1948) suggests a way in which distinctions
between tones may be made. According to him, tones can be distinguished
on the following basis: a level tone is one in which the pitch of a syllable
does not rise or fall during its production; a gliding tone is one in which
92
Table 4.3 Description of Vietnamese tone system
Symbol Numerical Phonological English Example

value name description
a 1 sác High rising pitch, sharp, ma
(acute accent) tense ‘cheek’
a 2 ngang Mid pitch, level tone ma
(unmarked) ‘ghost’
a 3 huyen Mid trailing pitch ma
(grave accent) ‘but’
a 4 ngâ Contour, mid-high trailing ma
(tilde) pitch, prolonged ‘horse’
combination of falling and
rising pitch, accompanied
by glottal stop
a 5 hôi Contour, mid-low ma
(question dropping pitch, prolonged ‘tomb’
mark) combination of rising and
falling pitch
<? 6 nang Very low dropping pitch, ma
(subscript dot) abruptly falling to bottom ‘mother’
by glottal stop
the pitch of a syllable has a perceptible rise or fall or some combination of

rise or fall (cf. Abramson 1972). On this basis, the six Vietnamese tones
can be distinguished as follows: Tones 4 and 5 may be regarded as gliding
tones and bi-directional. Tones 1, 3, and 6 are also gliding tones but
unidirectional. Only Tone 2 may be regarded as a level tone. What differs
primarily between Tones 4, 5 and the remaining tones is that Tones 4 and 5
are bi-directional, while Tones 1, 2, 3, and 6 are unidirectional. Note also
that Tones 4 and 6 are usually accompanied by a strong glottal stop but
seldom trigger code-switching because these two tones, as will be
demonstrated in Section 4.5, are not perceived as similar to stress in the
lexical-level phonological structure of English.
As far as the phonological feature of the six tones are concerned, all
investigations of Vietnamese tones have agreed that it is also possible to
speak of the tones in terms of a three-tone system: high, mid, and low
(Doan Thien Thuat 1977). In addition to pitch levels, the tones can be
distinguished from each other by the direction of pitch movement.
Figure 4.1, a modified version of Doan Thien Thuat’s (1977), with the
addition of the phonetic notations taken from Vu Thanh Phirong (1982),
93
TONAL FACILITATION OF CODE-SWITCHING
Direction of pitch movement Phonetic notations
Tone 1: [35]
1
Tone 2: [33]
4 Tone 3: [32]
Tone 4: [214]
2
Tone 5: [212]
5 Tone 6: [21]
3
Figure 4.1 Pitch levels and direction of pitch movement
illustrates phonetic pitch values and trajectories of the high, mid, and low
tones.
As can be seen from Figure 4.1, Tones 4 and 5 are bi-directional and
differ mainly with regard to creakiness, Tones 1, 2, 3, 6 are unidirectional,
and Tone 2 is level. As the direction of movement o f the fourth and the
fifth tones are similar, these two tones are distinguishable only by careful
speech because their pitch heights are just slightly different in that the
former ends somewhat higher than the latter. With regard to the phonetic
representation, the high level tone [35] can be interpreted as starting at
mid-level pitch and ending at the highest level pitch. Tone 2 [33] starts at
mid-level and remains at this level. Tone 4 [214] starts at mid-level, falling
abruptly down to low, then rising to the mid-level, and so on.
Based primarily on these different features of Vietnamese tones, there
are two factors which can be used to differentiate the six tones from one
another. The first is the pitch height, the second the direction of pitch
movement. Those separable only by pitch height alone are the low-level
tones (Tones 5 and 6), the mid-level tone (Tone 3), and the high-level tone
(Tones 1, 2, and 4). In addition to the dimension of pitch level, the direction
of pitch movement also shows much contrast between unidirectional
tones and bi-directional tones. If one simply takes into consideration the
direction of movement alone, then the tones in Vietnamese can be
classified into two groups: those which are bi-directional and those that
are unidirectional. Of the first group are Tone 4 and Tone 5, which are
distinguishable from the unidirectional first, second, third and sixth
tones.
94
4.3.3 Tone relationships

The interaction between tones of juxtaposed syllables has been extensively
explored by linguists. In their ‘Universal of tone rules: evidence from West
Africa’, Hyman and Schuh (1974) survey tone patterns of twenty-five
tonal languages in West Africa and report various cases of how a tone
changes its shape due to the effect of the adjacent tone. Hyman and Schuh
identify twelve tone rules due to the effect of neighbouring tones upon one
another: downdrift, low-raising, spreading, absorption, simplication,
downstep, shifting, copying, polarisation, dissimilation, replacement, and
displacement (Hyman and Schuh 1974: 84). After having noted that the
rules vary from language to language, Hyman and Schuh suggest that there
is a general rule in all tonal languages. The shape of a tone is usually
affected by its juxtaposed tone. This phenomenon is commonly referred to
as ‘tone sandhi’ (Schuh 1978; Gandour 1978; Shen, S. Xiao-nan 1990;
Varley and So 1995). However, the way in which tone sandhi operates
differs from language to language (Gandour 1978). Examples of tone
sandhi were cited mostly from studies of Mandarin Chinese (Wang 1967;
Wang and Li 1967). Wang and Li (1967) report that in Mandarin Chinese,
Tone 3 (falling-rising) preceding another Tone 2 (high-rising) becomes
similar to the acoustic shape of Tone 2 (high-rising). Similar findings have
been reported in Coster and Kratochvil (1984) and Y. Shen (1967). In a
recent study on the prosody of Mandarin Chinese, Shen, S. Xiao-nan
(1990), after examining previous studies on the phenomenon of tone
sandhi in Mandarin Chinese, contends that tone sandhi does not only
involve the third tone, but also other tones depending on certain tonal
environments. She claims that tone sandhi occurs with Tone 4 (falling).
When a Tone 4 is followed by another Tone 4, the former does not fall to
the bottom, but only to the middle. However Shen’s treatment of tone
sandhi here is not very clear as she does not take into account the fact that
the reduction of the first tone 4 + Tone 4 is not likely to result into another
distinctive (Mandarin) tone. Rather, it seems to be more appropriate to
treat it as a case of tonal coarticulation than as a case of tone sandhi. In
other words, Shen does not differentiate tone sandhi as a rule-governed
process in the phonology of a language from tonal coarticulation. It can be
said that in some languages tone sandhi is triggered in certain tonal
environments, and basically it starts as the product of coarticulation.
The treatments of the phenomenon of tone sandhi vary in the
Vietnamese literature. Trän Hirong Mai (1969), for example, maintains
that a tone in Vietnamese is not replaced by another phonemic tone in any
tonal environment; that is, the pitch contrast between tones remains
95
unchanged in any linguistic environment. On the other hand, Vu Thanh

Phirong (1981) shows that in two-syllable utterances of various tone
combinations, the first tone usually rises before the high tone (Tone 1).
Other studies (NguySn Tai Can 1975; Ho Le 1976) also cite examples of
tone sandhi which occur in derivational morphemes. On the basis of a
handful of studies on the Vietnamese tones, it is premature to arrive at a
conclusion that the language involves the phenomenon of tone sandhi. To
be sure, there is one phenomenon of tone relationships that exists in
Vietnamese: that of ‘tone alienations’. In his study of tone relationships in
Vietnamese, Thompson (1987: 140-1) notes that tones on derivational
morphemes display special relationships to one another. He states that ‘in
the most common patterns the tone of the affix is in the same register (the
position of the tone in the derivational morphemes, i.e. first, second, third
or fourth) as that of its base’ (Thompson 1987: 140) (see Section 4.2).
On the basis of Thompson’s observation - with which I personally
agree - tone sandhi cannot be equated with tone relationship because the
former is concerned with the change of a tone due to the effect of a
neighbouring tone, while the latter refers to the patterns of tone in adjacent
syllables. In other words, in certain word combinations, the preceding tone
relates to the following tone but this relationship remains unchanged in
any linguistic environment. For example, Tones 1, 2, and 5 belong to the
first register, whereas Tones 3, 4, and 6 belong to the second registers (see
Table 4.4). In this respect, Thompson (1987: 140-1) is incorrect when he
equates ‘tone alternations’ with ‘tone relationships’ because tone
alternations implicitly refer to the change of tone (tone sandhi), while
tone relationships refer to the fixed patterns of tone in derivational
morphemes. Having clarified the phenomenon, I now turn to tone
relationships in Vietnamese.
As in a number of African languages (Appleyard 1991), Vietnamese
tones serve to distinguish lexical items, and is associated with the tone of
the adjacent syllable in derivational morphemes. To illustrate the relation
ship between adjacent tones in derivational morphemes in Vietnamese, it is
worth presenting the six tones which can be divided into two groups which
are further divided into three categories, as shown in Table 4.4.
In the most common patterns, pairs of adjacent syllables generally
receive the same type of tone in each category vertically or horizontally.
For example: ai oan (Tones 2 + 1, ‘grief’), nang nhoc (Tones 6 + 6,
‘heavy’), dem dep (Tones 3 + 6, ‘rather beautiful’), nao ne (Tones 4 + 3,
‘painful’), lang nhang (Tones 3 + 3, ‘slack’). In order to predict which tone
of the second syllable is associated with the first, the first tone has to be
taken into account. The basic rule may be stated as follows:
96
Table 4.4 Tone relationship (also see Table 4.1)
Range o f pitch level Even Short Long

1st register: mid-low to high pitch Tone 2 Tone 1 Tone 5
2nd register: low to mid-high pitch Tone 3 Tone 6 Tone 4
A tone of the syllable is determined by the tone of an adjacent syllable,

in that it is short after a short tone, long after a long tone, even after an
even tone, and within the same range of pitch level.
This rule applies mainly to derivational morphemes. Since Vietnamese
is devoid of inflectional morphology, words are perceived as single
isolated syllables and the combination of words tends to observe the main
principle generally. Given the main principle, one should expect that tonal
alternation also plays a significant role in differentiating between
morphemes in Vietnamese and English. Indeed, a stressed or unstressed
English morpheme - roughly equivalent to Tone 1 (high pitch), Tones 2
and 3 (mid-pitch) - is usually preceded (or followed) by a Vietnamese
morpheme whose tone is one of four tones out of the six: Tone 1 (sdc),
Tone 2 (ngang), Tone 3 (huyen), Tone 6 (nang).
4.4 QUANTIFICATION OF TONES AT POINT OF SWITCHING

In an attempt to quantify tones at the point of switching, tones in a
Vietnamese syllable preceding English items were counted. Table 4.5
shows the distribution of the tones at switch point in my corpus.
Table 4.5 Total number of tones at switch points
Tone name Description Number Percentage

Tone 1 (Sac) High rising pitch 1055 33.41%
Tone 2 (Ngang) Mid pitch (unmarked) 719 22.78%
Tone 3 (Huyen) Mid trailing pitch 924 29.27%
Tone 4 (Ngâ) Gliding 68 2.15%
Tone 5 (Hoi) Gliding 210 6.65%
Tone 6 (Nang) Very low dropping pitch 181 5.74%
Total 3157 100.00%
X2 = 50.30, p = 0.001
97
TONAL FA CILITATION OF C O D E -SW IT C H IN G
The first three tones (1,2 and 3) can be referred to as the ‘high tone
group’ because, in general, they have a common feature of higher pitch
than the ‘low tone group’ (4, 5, and 6). Let us recall that Tones 4 and 6 are
additionally marked by glottalisation. The markedness of this feature may
be another additional reason why these two tones show the lowest
occurrence rate at switch points. Table 4.5 shows that in this corpus the
high tone group accounts for 2698 cases, or 85.46 per cent of the total
number of tones at switch points. By contrast, there are only 459 tones
belonging to the low tone group at switch points. To determine whether the
difference is statistically significant, the result of these comparisons is
analysed by means of %2 analysis. It has been found that the data sets
between high-tone and low-tone groups differ significantly (p = 0.001) if
significance is set at the .01 level.
In examining tones at switch points by gender of the informants, it is
found that there is not much difference in the proportion of high and low
tones. Table 4.6 indicates the number of different tones which occurred at
switch points for both sexes.
As shown in Table 4.6, the proportion of the high tone group (Tones 1,
2, and 3) is much higher than that of the low tone group (Tone 4, 5, and 6).
This suggests that there is a common pattern of tones at switch points
between the male and female informants.
4.5 EFFECT OF TONES ON CODE-SWITCHING

From the data on specific Vietnamese tones at switch points, certain
frequent patterns stand out. In the first .place, the distribution of the two
tone groups at switch points revealed a striking difference. However,
Table 4.6 Distribution of tones at switch points by males and females
Tone name No. o f tones at switch point No. o f tones at switch point
by males by females
Tone 1 527 528
Tone 2 318 401
Tone 3 424 500
Tone 4 30 38
Tone 5 95 115
Tone 6 75 106
Total 1469 1688
98
within the low tone group, the incidence of Tone 4 at switch points is very
low compared to that of other tones. In general, the high tone group
comprises 85.46 per cent of the total number of tones at switch points. By
contrast, the proportion of the low tone group at switch points is quite low
(14.54 per cent). The question would then arise as to whether, and to what
extent, specific tones have an effect on code-switching.
In order to answer this specific question and judge the extent to which
the high tones seem to play a role in facilitating code-switching, I shall
attempt here to present the quantitative and the qualitative nature of tones
in Vietnamese.
4.5.1 Frequency of occurrence of Vietnamese tones

In his study of Vietnamese, Emeneau (1951) reports that the Vietnamese
tones vary somewhat in frequency of occurrence in the lexicon. To
illustrate the proportion of high tones (Tone 1, 2, and 3) in comparison
with that of low tones (Tones 4, 5, and 6), Emeneau (1951: 33) makes a
count of 6025 words, which are phonologically distinct. The result is that
the high tone group accounts for 3737 cases, or 62.02 per cent of the total
number of words counted, and the low tone group accounts for 2288 cases,
or 37.96 per cent. Based on Emeneau’s finding, the researcher employed
the Chi-test to determine whether the difference between the two sets of
tones is statistically significant. It was found that the data sets given by
Emeneau differs insignificantly (%2 = 5.76; p = 0.025) if significance is set
at the 0.01 level.
A comparison between the number of high tones (vs. low tones)
occurring in the normal context (Emeneau’s 6025 words) with high tones
occurring in the switched environment (my corpus) reveals a marked
difference. Although the occurrence of the high tone group is greater than
that of the low tone group in his Vietnamese lexical items, the difference is
statistically insignificant. This fact would render support to the idea that in
a linguistic environment involving English words, the Vietnamese tones
operate quite differently as if the tones depart from their usual distribution
in a pure Vietnamese linguistic environment or, to put it the other way
round, in code-switching context, the proportion of Vietnamese high tones
tends to occur at a much higher level than that of the low tones. This
finding is quantitative in nature, and I will attempt to explain it by
discussing other features of Vietnamese tones which may be related to
code-switching. The following two sections are qualitative in nature and
the main focus of this chapter.
99
4.5.2 Stress patterns of English and perceptual patterns

of Vietnamese tones
In his study of Vietnamese tones, Nguy6n Dinh Hoa (1980: 10) points out
that a Vietnamese hearer will notice a kind of tune in what speakers of
English say, which may range from low to high pitch although this does
not affect the meaning of the English. For example, the word ‘you’ in
English may have four contrastive lexical tones to the Vietnamese hearer:
/ju:/, /ju:/, /ju:/, and /ju:/. Each of these extra phonemes corresponds to the
four Vietnamese tones: Tone 1, Tone 2, Tone 3 and Tone 6 respectively.
Although Nguy§n Dinh Hoa explains how the Vietnamese hearer
recognises tones in other languages, albeit non-tone languages, without
having based this on any theoretical approach or experimental task, his
observation points to the importance of acoustic feature in the hearer’s
perception of tone. Indeed, what NguySn Dinh Hoa observes has been
investigated in studies on perceptual aspects of tonal processing in a
number of the tonal languages of the world. Research on tonal languages
(Chao 1930, 1980; Wang 1967; Ruhlen, 1976; Vance 1977; Gandour and
Harshman, 1978; Hashimoto 1980; Gandour 1983) shows that there are a
few dimensions of tone that are characterised to signal tonal distinction:
pitch height, direction of pitch movement, pitch range, beginning and
ending point of pitch movement. Of these pitch characteristics, two
primary dimensions of linguistic tone are commonly identified: pitch
height and the direction of pitch movement (Gandour 1983). In a cross-
linguistic study of combined language groups consisting of speakers of
tonal languages (Thai, Yoruba) and a non-tone language (English),
Gandour and Harshman (1978) report that pitch height is the most
important dimension for all language groups (speakers of tone and
non-tone languages). They explain that, for Thai and Yoruba speakers, the
‘emergence of this dimension as the most important is surely consistent
with fundamental notions of pitch perception having to do with placing
sounds on a scale ranging from high to low’ (Gandour and Harshman
1978: 18). Their explanation can be further elaborated by saying that
because pitch height reflects linguistic-phonetic distinctions of tone, that
is, some tones in Thai and Yoruba can be distinguished only by pitch
height, therefore more importance is attached to this dimension than to
other ones.
The second primary factor identified by Gandour and Harshman (1978)
is the direction of pitch movement. They reveal that the tonal language
groups attach more importance to this second dimension than the English
group does due to the occurrence of contrasting rising and falling tones in
100
the Thai lexicon, and the encoding of high tones as rising and low tone as
falling by Yoruba speakers. In a similar study of combined language
groups (Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, English), Gandour (1983)
confirms the previous findings, that is, Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese
speakers all attach more importance to the dimension of pitch height than
to other dimensions.
Based on previous studies on the perception of tone by speakers of
tonal languages (Hombert 1976b; Gandour and Harshman, 1978; Gandour
1981), it can be concluded that pitch height and the direction of pitch
movement are the important factors in the distinction of tone for speakers
of the tonal languages under investigation.
Turning now to the linguistic features of Vietnamese tones, in a
thorough study of Vietnamese tones, Vu Thanh Phircmg (1981) claims
that the direction of pitch movement is an important cue for tone
perception. To determine the relative perceptual importance of various
tonal dimensions, such as pitch height, direction of pitch movement, and
intensity, Vu Thanh Phirong (1981) conducts a series of experiments.
First, he tests the perception of real speech tones in meaningful contexts;
tones at the lexical level when lexical meaning can be inferred from
meaningful utterances and contribute to the identification of tones. Next,
he tests the perception of real speech tones in isolated syllables where
the phonetic features of the tone alone would determine their
recognition. He then tests synthetic tonal variants imposed on the word
ta. The test design assumes that direction of pitch movement and pitch
height are the principal acoustical features distinguishing the six
Vietnamese tones.
Analysis of the results of these tests leads Vu Thanh Phirong (1981) to
the following conclusion. In Vietnamese, the direction of pitch movement
and pitch height play a more important role than other tonal dimensions,
such as duration, intensity, in the identification of tones.
The explanation for the claim that the direction of pitch movement and
pitch height are fundamental dimensions in the distinction of tone is
twofold. In the first place, this is because the Vietnamese language has two
tones which have similar direction of pitch movement and are
distinguished only by pitch height: Tone 4 and Tone 5. Second, the
remaining tones separable by pitch height and the direction of pitch
movement are Tones 1, 2, 3, and 6. Since Tone 2 and Tone 3 have little
contrast in pitch height, they are distinguishable only by the direction of
pitch movement.
The fact that pitch height and the direction of pitch movement are more
important than other dimensions in terms of differentiating the Vietnamese
101
tones might possibly account for differences in the incidence of specific

tones at switch points.
Furthermore, it is generally acknowledged that although English has no
lexical tones, stress in English behaves in much the same way as pitch
operates in Vietnamese. It is worth noting here a number of previous works
concerning stress in English. According to Pike (1943: 49) whose work
Phonetics is widely cited in studies of articulation of speech: ‘A stress
group is a sequence of several syllables, one of which, the stressed
syllable, has much stronger initiator pressure than the others’.
Jones, in The Phoneme , Its Nature and Use , presents an explicit view of
stress (1950: 134-5):
Force of utterance, abstracted from the other attributes of speech
sounds, is termed stress. Stresses are essentially subjective
attitudes of the speaker. A strong stressed syllable, for instance,
is one which he consciously utters with greater effort than other
neighbouring syllables in the word or sentence.
The illustrated aspects of stress are further explored by Fry (1955, 1958)
who attempts to ascertain which of the four sound dimensions (pitch,
loudness, duration, timbre) is chiefly responsible for the perception of
what is termed ‘stress’. He asserts that pitch has a very strong influence on
judgements of stress. That is, a higher syllable is much more likely to be
heard as stressed than a lower one, therefore the pitch cue outweighs the
duration cue. Lieberman (1957), in his empirical analysis to determine
what acoustic features underlie one’s perception of English stress, records
sixteen American English speakers producing twenty-four word pairs of
the type pro ’gress/’p rogress. His analysis reveals that the stressed syllable
had a higher pitch in 90 per cent of case, and had a longer duration in 66
per cent. Based on this research, one can conclude that because stress in
English and pitch in Vietnamese share a distinct prosodic feature, they are
compatible. In other words, since pitch in the Vietnamese tones is
perceived as very similar to stress in the lexical-level phonological
structure of English, those tones that have a relatively high pitch pattern in
Vietnamese (Tones 1, 2 and 3) tend to facilitate switching.
This preliminary suggestion of tonal facilitation may be further
elaborated as articulatory and perceptual phenomena. Indeed, studies on
phonological processes (Wang 1967; Schane 1973; Maddieson 1991) have
indicated that generally the articulatory organs may be anticipating the
articulation of another sound. For tonal languages, tone x is replaced by
tone y within some linguistic environments (Wang 1967: 94). Such an
observation about the phonological features of tone is applied in
102
constructing a set of tone relationships in Vietnamese, which is used to

teach Vietnamese-speaking children how to mark diacritics on derivational
morphemes bearing a similar acoustic feature, e.g. Tone 4 and Tone 5.
This suggests that for a tone x in Vietnamese to be replaced by tone y, tone
x should predict tone y, or the former and the latter should be compatible
in such a way that they may harmonise with each other according to the
rule of tone relationships.
In his study of the interpretation of English stresses by Chinese-English
bilinguals when they switch from Chinese to English, Cheng (1968)
confirms that English stresses are perceived as Chinese tones with high
pitch by Chinese speakers. Although Cheng’s work does not examine the
role of tone in (Chinese-English) code-switching, his is an attempt to
establish whether Tone 3 (in Chinese) changes to Tone 2, i.e. tone sandhi,
in the position immediately preceding English words with different stress
on the first syllable. His explanation is also valid for my findings:
English stress ... has at least three acoustic features: pitch,
amplitude, and duration. Pitch is either relatively high or relatively
low. Thus we can use [high] (Cheng’s notation for phonological
features) for pitch. When the two languages, Chinese and English,
come into contact, the only feature in common is [high]. The
features [rising] and [falling] are irrelevant in English.
(Cheng 1968: 84)
What Cheng’s investigation of the speech of fifteen Chinese-English
bilinguals (by the Chinese speakers) shows is that ‘English stresses are
interpreted somehow in the same way as Chinese tones’ (op. cit.: 79).
Based on Chomsky and Miller (1963), Cheng, after assigning four degrees
to English stress: primary, secondary, tertiary, and weakest, concludes that
Chinese speakers interpret the English primary, secondary, and tertiary
stresses as having a [+ high] feature, while the weakest stress is perceived
as [—high]. Cheng’s claim is similar to that of NguySn Dinh Hoa (1980:
10) who also points to the importance of acoustic features in the
(Vietnamese) hearer’s perception of tone.
It appears that for English with its many polysyllabic morphemes, each
syllable may need to be given independent status in order for it to bear the
phonological features of tone. As stated earlier, an English stressed
syllable is perceived as of higher pitch than an unstressed one (Schane
1973). Therefore, the stress pattern of the English syllable is more or less
correlated with the perceptual pattern of the Vietnamese (high) tones
according to the Vietnamese phonological custom of assigning one tone to
each syllable. There are two implications of this observation. First, an
103
English stressed syllable perceptually corresponds to the Vietnamese tones

associated with the high pitch, typically Tone 1. Second, an English
unstressed syllable is perceived as the same as, or very similar to, the
Vietnamese tones associated with the mid pitch, notably Tone 2 and Tone 3.
This fact introduces the idea that there is a degree of perceived similarity
between stressed or unstressed syllables in English and the Vietnamese
tones which range from high to mid-level pitch.
Given that there are perceptually phonological compatibilities between
the Vietnamese tones associated with high and mid-level pitch and English
stressed/unstressed syllables, and the fact that high and mid tones in
Vietnamese are naturally liable to evoke images of height and clearness
(Hoàng Tue and Hoàng Minh 1975: 74; Thompson 1987: 287-8) as well as
the fact that there is a statistically significant proportion of the high tone
group at switch point, we can make the suggestion with considerable
confidence that code-switching is facilitated by the Vietnamese tones
associated with the pitch ranging from mid- to high-level pitch.
4.5.3 Cultural factor of tone

The above observation indicates that besides the fact that some tones are
favoured over others at the point of code-switching due to their
phonological features, another feature of tones, as suggested by Hoàng
Tue and Hoàng Minh (1975) and Thompson (1987), should be considered
as a cultural factor of the Vietnamese tones which may partly contribute to
the facilitation of code-switching. Thompson (1987: 287-8) notes: ‘In
general stress signals information already known or obvious in the context;
heavy stress (high pitch) signals new or contrastive information ... Heavy
stress ... conveys new or unexpected information’. The cultural factor of
Vietnamese tones is also noted by two Vietnamese scholars Nguyên and
Trirong (1963: 115). Indeed, for Vietnamese speakers, an accumulation of
similar tones in terms of pitch height is usually employed to achieve certain
effects in communication. This means that high tone becomes associated
with clarity and emphasis; mid-level tone evokes something even. It is this
type of tone perception that gives the Vietnamese tones a cultural
characteristic, as described by Vo Phiën: ‘a creation of feelings’ (Vo Phiën:
1988: 337; my translation), which, among other factors, induces a switch.
It seems appropriate to adopt a pragmatic approach here. The functions
of code-switching have been studied extensively (e.g. Auer 1984; Blom
and Gumperz 1972; Gumperz 1982; Heller 1988; Romaine 1995; Myers-
Scotton 1988). In a study of the functions of code-switching that dealt with
the symbolic effects, Blom and Gumperz (1972) investigated bidialectalism
104
in the town of Hemnesberget in northern Norway. They have posited a

distinction between referential and pragmatic functions of communication.
Whereas pragmatics deal with the effect of symbols of various kinds on
speakers and listeners, reference attaches largely to words. It should be
noted that the validity of Blom and Gumperz’s work has been challenged,
as is reported in Trudgill (1995: 8): ‘Many of the linguistic and
sociolinguistic details [in Blom and Gumperz’s study] are incorrect’.
In another study focusing on three language pairs (Slovenian/German,
Hindi/English, Spanish/English), Gumperz (1982) notes specific functions
which bilinguals mark by language alternations: message qualification,
reiteration, and addressee specification. On the other hand, Poplack (1980)
argues that switches do not always indicate specific effects or functions. In
a more recent work on French/English bilingualism in the Hull-Ottawa
community in Quebec, Canada, Poplack (1988) concludes that different
communities practise different types of code-switching.
The studies of the functional aspects of code-switching briefly reviewed
in Chapter 1 suggest that code-switching may serve many different
functions which in turn differ from community to community. In a
plausible attempt to incorporate the functional aspects of code-switching,
Romaine (1995: 121) states that the pragmatic approach assumes that the
motivation for switching is basically stylistic, and that code-switching
cannot be handled satisfactorily in terms of the internal structure of
sentences. The stylistic effects conveyed by code-switching have been
explored by Nwoye (1993) in his study of English-Igbo bilingualism in
Nigeria. According to Nwoye, code-switching can become a conscious and
a pragmatic strategy for achieving particular discourse objectives under
some discourse circumstances. In the English-Vietnamese code-switching
data used here, it will be shown that as a conscious discourse strategy and
a referential meaning, specific tones immediately preceding a code-switch
may serve the discourse function of indicating an emphasis and creating
clarity in the conversation.
Before giving evidence from the data to illustrate and support these
functions, another framework should be introduced for the analysis of the
functions served by the Vietnamese tones. Goffman (1974) introduced the
notion of ‘frame’ to refer to an event which members of a group agree on
as one entity. Frames are usually specified by both pragmatic and
linguistic features such as intonation, tone of voice, or lexical choice
(Gumperz 1982). Romaine (1995) observes that bilingual speakers often
use code-switching to mark a shift of frames. In the following examples,
the concept of frame helps to explain the English-Vietnamese code
switching with regard to the cultural factor of tone.
105
(87) Neu minh d i cho ho neu

if self let for them if
OFFICIALLY MAKE A CONNECTION WITH
officially make a connection with
thi VERY HAPPY (33M75R)
then very happy
‘If we let them officially make a connection then they are very happy.’
(88) Nhirng-ma cai bd do la la cai SHE'S AN ARCHITECT HERE
but CLA Mrs that is is CLA she’s an architect here
a bd d ira c FUNDED cai cai FUND B Y AIDAB. (67F77F)
PRT she FUNC-V-funded CLA CLA fund by aidab
‘But she is an architect here and she is funded by AIDAB.’
The male informant (63M75R, hereafter referred to as M) in (87) is
advising the female informant (67F77F, hereafter referred to as W) that
she should let her female supervisor deal with the Hanoi government about
a construction project. M uses a conditional clause in Vietnamese to begin
the sentence. According to the syntactic structure of both Vietnamese and
English, M does not have to repeat the conditional word neu ‘if’ before
switching to English as the structure of the Vietnamese dependent clause
can be syntactically matched with the structure of English main clause
without neu. Yet M adds neu immediately before switching although neu
does not make the English clause become a redundant conditional clause
according to the context of the whole Vietnamese-English composite
sentence. The addition of neu suggests that M took his advice very
seriously. Obviously, neu, bearing a high pitch of Tone 1, is used to
emphasise what is about to be introduced in the following switch.
In (88), by a similar discourse strategy, in introducing the female
supervisor, 67F77F (W) could have started the switch after the verb la ‘to
be’. Instead, after repeating la , W then emphasises the switch by using the
classifier cai which is unnecessary according to the compatible syntactic
structure of Vietnamese and English. In addition, W does not finish her
next utterance without inserting the classifier cai after the word ‘funded’
because without cai her utterance follows completely the structure of
passive voice in Vietnamese and English: ‘Bd dwcrc (literally ‘She gain’)
funded by AIDAB’. Although the plassifier cai may be optional in a plain
Vietnamese sentence without switching, it is likely that when inserting the
classifier cai (Tone 1) before ‘fund’, W may want to draw attention to
‘fund’, which may be an important factor to her. The words neu and cai
106
therefore were used not to fulfil grammatical functions, but to signal the
code-switching.
Consider examples (89) and (90) below:
(89) Nhirng g i no noi may phai do RECALL lai

PL what he say you must DET recall again
het. (59M80S)
FINAL-PRT
‘You have to recall whatever he said.’
(90) May co th i co ASK YOU CAN'T KEEP ABUSING ME. (63M82F)
you can have ask you can’t keep abusing me
‘You should ask you can’t keep abusing me.’
In (89), the determiner do ‘that’ before the switched verb ‘recall’ does not
bear any meaning according to the syntactic structure of the sentence.
Without do , the structure of the sentence would have been compatible in
both languages, and can be illustrated as follows:
(89a)
Nhitng gi no noi may phai RECALL lai het
PL what he say you must recall again FINAL-PRT
(89a) indicates the (lexical) item-to-item correspondence without do
immediately preceding ‘recall’. Supposing that the speaker did not switch
the English verb ‘recall’ but used an equivalent Vietnamese verb for
‘recall’ (nh&) without do , the sentence would have followed completely
the structure of a Vietnamese sentence. Do in this sentence is not only
unnecessary but also ungrammatical. Therefore, the insertion of do may be
assumed to have conveyed an emphatic meaning, which, as noted by
Thompson (1987), is to signal a new lexical item. In this regard, do (Tone
1) plays the role of a tone in Vietnamese, which, by definition, is used
lexically exclusively with no correlation with the syntactic aspects of the
sentence. In this sense, do serves to emphasise the following lexical item.
By the same token, in (90), the word co ‘to have’ is unnecessary on the
basis of the syntactic structure of Vietnamese and English. But without co
in (90) and do in (89), the English switched word in these two examples
would have been immediately preceded by a Vietnamese word bearing
Tone 5. Let us recall that Tone 5 has low pitch, is a bi-directional tone, and
does not have the emphatic characteristics of the high-pitch tones. Thus, we
might assume that the word co in (90) serves to signal the code-switching.
In order to judge the extent to which the cultural factor of tones would
contribute to code-switching, the researcher counted all system words
107
bearing high tones occurring before switch points. It is revealed that the
proportion of system words accounts for only 3.8 per cent of all the
morphemes immediately preceding switch points. Incidentally, this
finding does not lend strong support to my assumption that the cultural
factor of Vietnamese tones specifically induces code-switching. However,
given the fact that system words bearing high tones do occur before code
switching, as shown in the above examples, it would be reasonable to
suggest that the cultural factor of Vietnamese tones is to a certain extent
indicative of code-switching.
Through the examination of the characteristics of the Vietnamese tones,
it can be concluded that the higher the pitch level of the tone (Tones 1, 2,
and 3), the more likely it will be to facilitate code-switching. In an attempt
to present this observation, it seems best to form a tonal model for the
occurrence of code-switches, which is illustrated in Figure 4.2.
As can be seen from Figure 4.2, the frequency of code-switching is
generally predicted from the perceptual value of pitch height in relation to
English stressed and unstressed syllables: the higher the value, the more it
facilitates a switch. The contour tones (Tones 4 and 5) are excluded in this
proposed model since they are perceptually not compatible with stress in
English.
4.6 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, the features of tone have been presented for the dual
purpose of (i) describing the possible alternation of adjacent tones and
sociocultural factors of tones that are found in the Vietnamese language,
and (ii) providing the linguistic basis from which a comparison between
the pitch height in Vietnamese and stress in English is made.
The analysis of tones immediately preceding code-switches revealed
that there is a statistically significant proportion of the high tone group
(Tones 1, 2, and 3) at the point of switching. This finding, together with
the fact that there are perceptually phonological compatibilities between
High frequency of code-switching
Tone Point of facilitating code-switching
Low frequency of code-switching

Figure 4.2 Code-switching in relation to pitch height
108
the Vietnamese tones of high and mid-level pitch and that of English
stressed/unstressed syllables, suggests that code-switching is facilitated by
the mid-level to high-pitch Vietnamese tones.
It is worth noting here that although the findings may be intriguing,
tonal facilitation is viewed as a tendency, not as a universal rule governing
code-switching between English and the tonal languages of the world.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon of code-switching is made salient by the
Vietnamese tones.
109
Chapter 5
Code-switching of
personal pronouns
5.1 INTRODUCTION
In many studies on structural constraints of code-switching, pronouns have
been categorised as belonging to the elements of the closed (vs. open)
class which, under structural constraints, are prohibited from switching
(Timm 1975; Poplack 1980). Based on his Marathi-English code
switching data, Joshi (1985: 194), for example, finds that closed class
categories (e.g. quantifiers, prepositions, possessives, determiners, pro
nouns) cannot be switched. As counter-examples to Joshi’s claim have
already been documented in the literature (Bentahila and Davies 1983,
Gardner-Chloros 1991; Azuma 1993; Jake 1994), it is not the intention
here to provide an analysis of switched pronouns in the light of structural
constraints, but rather to discuss the use of English personal pronouns in
the speech of Vietnamese-English bilinguals.
This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part begins with the
description of the variation in Vietnamese person-reference lexical items.
Then some rules regulating the usage of Vietnamese person-reference
forms are discussed. In the course of examining the meanings of person-
reference terms, attention will be paid to the relations between Vietnamese
person-reference terms and the contexts of their usages.
The first part therefore deals mainly with the pragmatic implications of
Vietnamese pronouns which consist of kinship terms, proper nouns, and
personal pronouns. The presentation of the Vietnamese system of person
reference is intended to provide the most salient features of the
Vietnamese sociolinguistic resource by means of which the use of person
reference is inextricably linked to the relationships between addressor,
addressee, and the referred third parties.
Given their acquisition of English in multilingual Australia, the
Vietnamese in Melbourne, or specifically the informants in this study,
have incorporated English personal pronouns into their own system of
person reference and, as expected, made use of English pronouns in their
111
C O D E -SW IT C H IN G OF PERSO NA L PRO N O U NS
speech. From a sociolinguistic point of view, the use of English personal

pronouns in the speech of the Vietnamese prompts a wealth of intriguing
questions. For example, what is the underlying motivation for the switch in
the course of a speech interaction? Such a question has been posed by
Myers-Scotton (1988) as she attempts to provide a theoretical explanation
of the sociolinguistic aspects of code-switching: The speakers ‘are free to
make any choice (between codes), but how their choices will be
interpreted is not free’ (Myers-Scotton 1988: 155). ‘How their choices
will be interpreted’ will be discussed in the second part of this chapter.
The second part of this chapter focuses on the use of English personal
pronouns in the corpus. Based on the evidence of the use of English
pronouns followed by code-switching, the researcher will seek to establish
a theoretical framework which will account for the code-switching in the
corpus. The code-switching literature indicates that several approaches
have been attempted to explain the phenomenon, a sociolinguistic and a
pragmatic point of view. As an example of such an approach, Myers-
Scotton’s concept of markedness offers a framework to understand how
code-switching can be approached as a communicatively and socially
functional phenomenon (Myers-Scotton 1993a). This chapter will use
Myers-Scotton’s concept for the following reason. In this view, code
switching can be seen as a means to negotiate the relationships among
participants in the conversation. It holds that all speakers have a
knowledge of roles and obligations (RO) associated with the language
they use. According to Myers-Scotton, the RO sets are available resources
to which every speaker may have equal access. In practice, as shown by
Gumperz (1982), linguistic and cultural resources are not always equally
distributed in any given community. With regard to the Vietnamese,
knowledge of the regularity of use of person-reference terms can be taken
as the unmarked RO set which all members of the community can
conventionally possess in whose values they can share. In this respect,
Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model may be relied upon as a linguistic
device that can be used for the interpretation of the code-switching of
personal pronouns.
5.2 THE VIETNAMESE SYSTEM OF PERSON REFERENCE

The complex system of person reference in Vietnamese comprises lexical
alternatives of common nouns (kinship and social status terms), proper
nouns, and personal pronouns. In general, the three subclasses (common
nouns, proper nouns, and personal pronouns) of the person-reference
system have the following features.
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C O D E -SW IT C H IN G OF PERSO N A L PRO NOUNS
First, these linguistic forms are structural equivalents. That is, they can
substitute for each other in the same syntactic structure. Consider the
following example extracted from Thompson (1987: 293):
(a) Tai-sao con khong noi cho ma ich leri cua trau cau?
why child not tell for mother useful of betel
‘Why did the child not talk about the useful aspects of betel chewing
for mother?’
The above example can be translated in different ways as shown below.
Sufficient to say here that without knowledge of the context in which the
above utterance occurs, the hearer will find it very ambiguous. For
example, we can imagine a situation in which the speaker, after having a
family dinner, announces the utterance (a). Assuming that no ‘child’ is
physically present or present in previous discourse, and assuming that
there may be more than one child in the family, we may wonder what the
context should contain for the hearer to identify the potential referent.
The hearer may have a few assumptions about one or more children in the
family. Perhaps the child can be identified as the one who is the eldest
daughter in the family, and who often recites stories for her mother.
Clearly, several assumptions can be made by the hearer on hearing the
speaker’s utterance, which can be interpreted as follows. The speaker of
this utterance may be the mother. Since she may assume the position of a
child who refers to her as ma ‘mother’, she addresses herself as ma while
talking with her child. Or this sentence may be produced by the father. In
talking with the child, the father can simply take his child’s perspective by
using ma to refer to the child’s mother. Or in talking with the father, the
child addresses herself as con ‘child’ and refers to her mother as ma. It is
therefore possible to assume that there are five ways to identify the exact
referents of con and ma:
(b) Why did the child not [i.e. the addressee] talk about the useful aspects
of betel chewing for mother [i.e. the addressor]?
(c) Why did the child not [i.e. the addressee] talk about the useful aspects of
betel chewing for mother [i.e. the third party]? - (father talking to child)
(d) Why did the child not [i.e. the addressor] talk about the useful aspects
of betel chewing for mother [i.e. the third party]? - (child talking to
father)
(e) Why did the child not [i.e. the addressor] talk about the useful aspects
of betel chewing for mother [i.e. the addressee]?
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(f) Why did the child not [i.e. the third party] talk about the useful aspects
of betel chewing for mother [i.e. the addressee]? - (father talking to
mother)
The kinship terms con and ma can also be replaced by any address terms
(i.e. proper nouns or personal pronouns). For example, if the addressor is
the mother, she could choose other linguistic forms to address her
daughter: either con (‘child’/common noun), may (‘you’/personal
pronoun), or A (given name/proper noun) without violating the syntactic
structure of the utterance.
Second, the meanings of linguistic forms in the Vietnamese person-
reference system are defined in accordance with the speech environment.
That is, the use of the same linguistic form in the person-reference system
in different interactional situations may be decoded differently. This
feature will be elaborated in the sections that follow.
In fact, the relation between the meanings of linguistic forms and their
contextual usage is a complicated one. To begin with, Section 5.2.1 will
sketch some relevant linguistic theories which can be applicable to the
communicative rules of usage of linguistic forms in the Vietnamese
system of person reference.
5.2.1 Some theoretical overview

Sometimes there is a relationship between linguistic and cultural distance.
Lyons (1981a: 312), for instance, notes that ‘there are ... many differences
of both grammatical and lexical structure which can be correlated with
differences in the cultures with which particular languages are associated’.
This indicates that language behaviour is a culture-dependent activity, and
differences between patterns of language usage seem to correspond to
distinctions exhibited in the cultures in which those languages are used. In
a study of English and German discourse structures and discourse
expectations, Clyne (1987b: 76) finds that although the English seem to
follow a linear pattern for the development of their topics, the Germans,
Italians, and Russians tend to develop their argumentation in a more spiral
way (see also Clyne 1994: 160-75 for a discussion of culture-specific
patterns in academic writing). It should be added here that the Vietnamese
also tend to follow the latter type of argumentation. And in the course of
developing their conversational style, the Vietnamese have to make a
choice of a wide range of address terms, which, as will be seen, plays a key
role in establishing, maintaining, and terminating social relationships with
others.
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The study of address systems and terminology has long been of central
interest to sociolinguists and anthropologists. Many have not only focused
.
on forms of address in a particular language and culture (Brown and Ford

1961; Bates and Benigni 1975; Lambert and Tucker 1976; Bean 1978;
Scotton and Wanjin 1983; Luong 1987; Srivastava and Pandit 1988;
Sifianou 1992), but also described patterns of usage in various languages
and cultures in an attempt to seek generalisations and universals in the
field of address (Goffman 1981; Brown and Levinson 1978, 1979; Braun
1988). For example, gathering information on patterns and systems of
address in thirty languages and citing several instances of variation in
address systems of many languages and societies, Braun (1988) concludes
that ‘apart from the fact that forms of address somehow refer to
addressees, or are directed at addressees, their main function is to define
the relationship of speaker and hearer in a dyad’ (1988: 296).
Braun suggests that there is a relation between the use and meaning
of person-reference terms. This relation corresponds to Saussure’s
dichotomy of the signifier and the signified (1959). Although Braun’s
statement did not explicitly refer to the Saussurean position, the
implication was there. That is, the relation between the use and
the meaning of person reference terms is purely conventional, but it is
the conventional nature of the signifier-signified relation that structures
the interactional situation.
In his An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Russell (1940: 204) suggests
that ‘languages serve three purposes: (1) to indicate facts, (2) to express
the state of the speaker, (3) to alter the state of the hearer’. Russell appears
to place his emphasis on the pragmatic effects of language when he states
that ‘knowing a language consists in using words appropriately, and acting
appropriately when they are heard’ (1940: 26). Malinowski (1971)
suggests that the same linguistic form is not the same word when used
in different contexts. To Malinowski, the meaning of a linguistic form
varies with the context of its usage. In Malinowski’s own words: ‘It is the
pragmatic use of speech within the context of action which has shaped its
structure, determined its vocabulary, and led to various problematic
characteristics such as multiplicity of meanings’ (1971: 52). This is
in contrast to the Confucian doctrine of name rectification. According
to this doctrine, role terms (such as ‘king’, ‘father’, ‘child’) must be
used appropriately in association with the social roles of interlocutors
(Trän Trong Kim 1971: 129), and interlocutors must behave in accordance
with what the ‘name’ of their role entails (cf. Russell 1940). The
following quoted excerpts highlight the Confucian doctrine of name
rectification:
115
Duke Ching of Ch’i asked Master K’ung about government.

Master K’ung replied saying, Let the prince be a prince [behaving
like a prince], the minister a minister [behaving like a minister],
the father a father [behaving like a father], and the son a son
[behaving like a son].
(Confucian Analects, Book XII, Ch. XI)*
Tzu-lu said, If the prince of Wei was waiting for you to come and
administer his country for him, what would be your first measure?
The Master said, It would certainly be to correct language. Tzu-lu
said ... Why should language be corrected? The Master said ... A
gentleman, when things he does not understand are mentioned,
should maintain an attitude of reserve. If language is incorrect,
then what is said does not concord with what was meant; and if
what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be
done cannot be effected ... Therefore the gentleman uses only
such language as is proper for speech, and only speaks of what it
would be proper to carry into effect. The gentleman, in what he
says, leaves nothing to mere chance.
(Confucian Analects, Book XIII, Ch. III)^
These two sayings spell out the cultural values of names in association
with roles. The Confucian doctrine of name rectification has entered into
the metalinguistic awareness of Vietnamese speakers, who in their daily
speech behaviour choose certain forms in the system of person reference
which they consider as appropriate to indicate the relations among the
referents (addressor, addressee, and third party). However, this is not
suggesting that the choice of form of address is exclusively Vietnamese.
Similar features can be found in other societies, as such a feature is evident
in many studies (e.g. Romaine 1994). Sifianou (1992), for example,
reports that Greek speakers are also aware of strategic effect in
conversation in using address terms. Sifianou (1992: 73) remarks that
‘The creation and use of forms of address serve important functions. They
enable speakers to express their distance and formality or intimacy and
give clues to participant stands in the social structure’.
The choices of linguistic forms are discussed in the following
sections.
*See Waley, A. (1938), p. 166.

+See Waley, A. (1938), pp. 171-2.
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C O D E -SW IT C H IN G OF PERSO NA L PRO NOUNS
5.2.2 Vietnamese kinship terms

As has been mentioned, the Confucian doctrine of name rectification
emphasises that name or role terms should be used in accordance with the
order of the universe, that persons should behave in accordance with the
name of their role, i.e. as a cha ‘father’, con ‘son’, vua ‘king’, toi ‘subject’
(Lircmg 1988). Within family contexts, for example, young children
are not expected to use the personal pronoun nó (she/he/her/him/it) in
reference to older siblings or cousins, as this address form implies the
speaker’s lack of deference to the addressee or the third party. Vietnamese
kinship terms hold an important role in indicating the relationship of
participants, not only within a family context, but also beyond.
In striking contrast to their English counterparts, Vietnamese kinship
terms can be used for addressor, addressee, and third party references. This
kind of usage is an important part of conversation and establishes an
interaction in a way which may be pleasant or unpleasant. Examine the
following examples from my data: The addressor in (91) is a woman,
codenamed 65F80R, who was talking to an older woman, codenamed
50F86R:
(91) Chìrng nào chi ve de em
when elder sister [i.e. addressee] go home let younger
sibling [i.e. addressor]
nói anh dira. (65F80R)
ask elder brother [i.e. third party] take
‘When you go home I’ll ask my husband to give you a lift.’
(92) Thói, dè tui goi chàu nó t&i chfr. (50F86R)
no, let me call grandchild [i.e. third party] he come pick
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call my son to pick me up.’
In (91), the woman 65F80R used the kinship terms chi ‘elder sister’, em
‘younger sibling’, and anh ‘elder brother’ to refer to the addressee, the
addressor and the third party respectively. This highlights the fact that in
Vietnamese speech interaction, kinship terms are also used among
non-relatives. The addressor chose chi for the addressee reference on the
basis that the addressee is older than the addressor. Thus, the use of
kinship terms in (91) is to address the hierarchical relation among the
referents (the addressor, her husband’s friend, and her husband). The use
of c h i . . . em ‘elder sister ... younger sibling’ also implies the acceptance
of the addressor’s subordinate status vis-à-vis the addressee and reinforces
a solidarity relation with the addressee.
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C O D E -SW IT C H IN G OF PERSO N A L PRO N O U NS
Similarly, in (92), in referring to her son (third party), the addressor

50F86R used the kinship term chau ‘grandchild’ instead of con ‘child’ as
she would if she addressed him. By using chau , 50F86R not only specified
a different relationship between herself and the addressee 65F80R towards
the third party, but also indicated hierarchical and solidarity relations with
the addressee. At the same time, she defined the hierarchical relation
between her son and the addressee (i.e. the son is the addressee’s junior).
In order to avoid causing incongruence in the contextual relations defined
by 50F86R, the younger woman (65F80R) chose the kinship term chau in
referring to the son of 50F86R for the rest of the conversation. In other
words, 65F80R takes the addressee’s perspective in reference to the
addressee’s absent son (i.e. the third party). In this way. 65F80R reinforces
a solidarity relation with the addressee.
The kinship term usage in (91) and (92) demonstrates that linguistic
forms of person reference can pragmatically determine interactional
situations. However, the choice of using specific kinship terms is not a
simple task. In situations where interlocutors are of opposite genders,
different ages, and/or strangers, the task of selecting terms of address is a
complicated one. For example, it is very embarrassing to make up one’s
mind whether the addressor- and addressee-reference pair anh ... em
‘elder brother ... younger sibling’ or toi ... em ‘I ... younger sibling’
should be used to imply a solidarity relation; whether the relation th a y ...
con ‘teacher ... child’ expresses more solidarity than that of toi ... em
‘I ... younger sibling’. These ambiguities are rooted in the Vietnamese
speakers’ metalinguistic awareness of the doctrine of name rectification
which forces Vietnamese speakers to make constant choices among
alternative person reference forms. Thus, in situations where stability
appears to arise, Vietnamese speakers often weigh person reference
terms in the stable solidarity/unstable solidarity balance, to which we
now turn.
5.2.3 Proper nouns

Proper nouns, including personal names, have received attention in the
literature (e.g. Searle 1969; Kripke 1972; Carroll 1983; Marmaridou 1989;
among others). The discussion of the use of proper nouns focuses on one
major issue: whether proper nouns have meaning. It is not our intention
here to go into the details of the discussion. Rather, some of the features
exhibited in the use of Vietnamese proper nouns will be addressed in order
to uncover the extent of the differences and similarities in the use of this
address form in the two languages under consideration.
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In the Vietnamese system of person reference, proper nouns are used

frequently for addressee and third party references, but infrequently for
self-reference. Structurally, proper nouns can be used as a substitute for
common nouns and person pronouns. In practice, the use of other
linguistic forms and proper nouns in particular inseparably relates to its
usage contexts. This is because proper nouns do not indicate the hierarchy
of power. It is not proper nouns but kinship terms that are used in
accordance with addressor, addressee, and third party reference to imply
the hierarchy of the speech contexts.
Proper nouns in the person-reference system consist of two categories:
ho ‘surname’ and ten ‘given name’. As a general rule, surnames are used
to project greater respect towards addressee and third party referents than
given names. In formal situations (Thompson 1987: 292), the use of given
names for addressee and third party references, especially towards the
superior parties, are avoided. The use of given names is mainly limited to
relationships involving the extended family and the circle of close friends.
However, the rule for forms of address, such as proper nouns and
personal pronouns, is not unambiguous. For example, the use of a given
name can pragmatically imply either less respect for the addressee or more
informal solidarity with the addressee. The ambiguity in the use of given
names can be attributed to a name taboo: the avoidance of personal name
usage in the family domain where junior kin are prohibited from
mentioning the personal names of their elder relatives. The name taboo
implies the hierarchical and power relations between the referents
(addressor, addressee, and a third party) who do not occupy similar
status. Status in Vietnam, as explained in Thompson (1987), is thought of
in terms of age, gender, and social position. In Thompson’s own words:
‘Elders are venerated over younger persons; males enjoy more prestige
than females. To some extent, overriding these two other factors is a matter
of the individual’s standing in the community; there is a class hierarchy in
which prestige is accorded persons of sociopolitical rank, intellectual
achievement and wealth’ (1987: 292). Thus, to call a person by her/his
given name is to take the risk of violating a rule of conversation, i.e.
abusing the referent’s status. And status, as can be seen, is far from clearly
definable.
The Vietnamese system of person reference makes the choice of an
appropriate form ambiguous and one runs the risk of violating the
appropriate person reference rules.
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5.2.4 Personal pronouns

Similar to the other two subclasses, personal pronouns in the Vietnamese
system of person reference comprise many linguistic forms. In contrast to
personal pronouns in English, some personal pronouns in Vietnamese can
be used in referring not only to third parties, but also to addressors and
addressees. They include minh/ta/ngirai/ai, roughly equivalent to ‘self/us/
person/who’ respectively. For example, minh ‘self’ can be used in referring
to both addressor and addressee, ngtr&i ‘person’ to both addressor and
third party, ta/ai ‘us/who’ to addressor, addressee and third parties. In
general, the meanings and use of Vietnamese personal pronouns are
inextricably linked to the pragmatic implications of these linguistic forms
(see Lirong 1987); that is, certain forms may pragmatically imply a lack
of deference towards the referent, while others imply exactly the opposite.
For example, the personal pronoun no ‘he/she/it’ indicates lack of
deference towards the referent, whereas the reverse is true for the personal
pronouns ong ay/ba ay ‘he/she’. This is due to the fact that no can be used
to refer to any third party, from human beings to inanimate entity. On the
basis of this fact, ambiguity underlies the implications of personal
pronouns, as illustrated in Table 5.1.
In general, when Vietnamese interactants are closely related, they may
use may second personal pronoun. On the other hand, if interactants are not
close, they tend to exchange the polite ong/ba second personal pronoun. To
a certain extent, the ambiguous implication of Vietnamese person pronouns
can be said to be relatively similar to that of the T and V pronouns in a
Table 5.1 Implications of Vietnamese personal pronouns
Personal pronouns Deference to Relation with English

reference referent equivalents
Toi/chung toi No Ambiguous I/we
Tao/chung tao No Ambiguous I/we
May/chung may No Ambiguous You
No/chung no No Ambiguous It/they
Han/y No Ambiguous He
Cha/ba No Ambiguous He/she
Ong ay/ba ay Yes Ambiguous He/she
Ta/chung ta Yes Ambiguous I/we
Bay/chimg bay No Ambiguous You
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number of European and Asian languages (Brown and Gilman 1960: 252).
In very brief terms, Brown and Gilman distinguish between singular or
‘familiar’ T (from the Latin tu) and plural or ‘polite’ V (from the Latin vos)
second personal pronouns in any language. These authors find that when
interactants are closely related, they tend to use T pronouns reciprocally. If,
however, interactants are not close but of similar status, they may exchange
V pronouns reciprocally. The choice of V form is related to differences and
is indicative of the relationships between interactants. Wardhaugh (1986:
267) renders support to Brown and Gilman’s findings by stating that the use
of the V form indicates ‘our feelings towards others - solidarity, power,
distance, respect, intimacy, and so on - and our awareness of social
customs’. Romaine (1994: 148-58) reports similar findings in the use of
address forms of various European languages.
However, any attempt to bring in a rule which specifies the relation of
Vietnamese personal pronouns to the context of their usage is not possible
because under particular speech environments, terms of personal pronouns
may change accordingly. As indicated in Table 5.1, the usage of such
Vietnamese personal pronouns as tao ‘I’ and may ‘you’ may pragmatically
presuppose either the underlying incongruence and hostility, or reinforce
solidarity and stability between speakers. It is the inconsistency of rules
specifying the relation of personal pronoun forms to the context of their
usage that underlies certain ambiguity. This ambiguity emerges from the
inconsistent meanings of Vietnamese personal pronouns, and is similar to
the ambiguity with regard to the choice of kinship terms discussed
previously.
I would suggest that the conflicting meanings of Vietnamese personal
pronouns as well as other subclasses of person reference system can be
removed if there exists a set of lexical forms which are decoded as being
pragmatically neutral in addressing the referents. In this respect, English
personal pronouns can serve as mediating forms. From a historical
perspective, the French personal pronouns toi/moi have been transferred
into the Vietnamese system of person reference in certain contexts, such as
within French-educated Vietnamese circles. The two French personal
pronouns toi/moi were also used by Vietnamese speakers when they spoke
to people they did not know well. By using toi/moi for self- and addressee
references, Vietnamese speakers deliberately avoid taking the risk of
implying a negative relation in speech behaviour. In other words,
Vietnamese speakers neutralise the ambiguous meanings of Vietnamese
personal pronouns by replacing alternative forms in the person-reference
system with French personal pronouns. The phenomenon of avoidance, so
to speak, occurs not for structural but for semantic reasons.
121
The same can be said of English personal pronouns which have been
used among Vietnamese-English bilinguals in the corpus. The researcher
has observed that a number of the subjects were very adept at avoiding the
use of linguistic forms in the Vietnamese system of person reference in
certain contexts. Specifically, the subjects frequently used me and you for
addressor and addressee references when the status of the referents appears
to be ambiguous: between those whose ages are different while (social)
status is similar (i.e. engineer/social worker), or between those who do not
know each other well enough to establish a relationship. In a number of
cases, the referent of anh/chi/em (‘elder brother’/4elder sister’/ ‘younger
sibling’ respectively) shifts to me/you/he/she with the change in the
addressor’s attitudes towards the referents (addressee and third party). In
other words, the shifts from Vietnamese personal pronouns to English ones
signal a change in the addressor’s attitudes. The significance of the use in
personal pronouns can be highlighted in the utterances below:
(A) Setting: Exchanges between younger sister and her elder brother:
(93) Anh cho1 em di
elder brother [i.e. addressee] ride younger sibling go
diro’c khong? (73F79S)
OK not [i.e. addressor]
‘Can you give me a ride?’
(94) Tdi nay anh ban. (65M79S)
tonight elder brother [i.e. addressor] busy
‘I’m busy tonight.’
(95) YOU ALWAYS ban a, ME noi
you always busy PRT me say
em H TAKE ME THEN. (73F79S)
younger sibling H [i.e. third party] take me then
‘You’re always busy, I’ll ask H to take me then.’
The use of the kinship term anh in (93) pragmatically implies respect for
and solidarity with the addressee. When ‘elder brother’ turned down his
sister’s request, the use of the personal pronoun you in (95) immediately
negates the previous implication. At the same time, 73F79S used the
kinship term em ‘younger sibling’ in referring to her younger brother H
(third party) to pragmatically imply slightly greater solidarity with the third
party than with the addressee. In other words, the shift from the frequent
use of the kinship term anh to English personal pronoun you implies at
least a temporary negation of the solidarity and affectionate kinship
122
relation between the addressor and the addressee in this interactional

context.
Consider another example from the interview data:
(96) Phông vân tôi à mà YOU
interview me PRT but you
muon ME TALK ABOUT WHAT? (65M80F)
want me talk about what
‘You want to interview me but what do you want me to talk about?’
By replacing the Vietnamese personal pronoun tôi ‘I’ with the English
pronouns ‘you’ and ‘me’, the addressor, who was responding positively to
a request for an interview, avoided the formal implications of the
Vietnamese personal pronoun tôi.
The use of English personal pronouns reflects a semantic avoidance
strategy and is rooted in the highly complex Vietnamese system of person
reference. It is the choice of English personal pronouns by some
informants which consequently triggers code-switching, and this is the
focus of the remainder of this chapter.
5.3 THE UNDERLYING MOTIVATION FOR CODE-SWITCHING

OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS
In Chapter 1, it was pointed out that previous attempts to account for
switches involving pronouns have been made using a variety of
approaches. It was also noted that every proposed model receives certain
support from researchers, and the reasons for which it is supported are as
various as the views from which researchers approach the phenomenon of
code-switching. In this sense, apart from the linguistic-structural approach
to code-switching presented in Chapter 1, an approach to code-switching is
also taken from the sociolinguistic and pragmatic point of view, which
I take as a device to analyse the switching of personal pronouns in my
corpus.
From the sociolinguistic and pragmatic point of view, it is said that
code-switching is a distinct strategy which is an indicator of larger
sociopolitical development (Heller 1988). This view can be seen through
Heller’s work which investigates the sociopolitical dimension of code
switching with a focus on the way that boundaries between language
groups influence bilingual behaviour.
In a similar manner, Myers-Scotton (1993a) attempts to explain the
sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of code-switching with a socio
linguistic model. In very general terms, Myers-Scotton argues that most
123
code-switching is to negotiate a social situation, and interaction types

in every conversational situation are conventionalised and have
relatively fixed schemata about the role relations between speakers
(see Chapter 1).
With regard to the use of the complex Vietnamese system of person
reference, the switch to an English personal pronoun, or the shift from one
particular Vietnamese address term to another, is inextricably bound to the
relations among the participants in the conversation. As discussed in
Section 5.2, in certain speech contexts, the addressor switches from a
Vietnamese address term to an English personal pronoun to signal a
change in his/her attitude toward the addressee. To further elaborate this
point, consider the following examples:
(B) Setting: The female informant (66F84F) wanted to borrow her friend’s
(69F78R) book:
(97) May d i tao m wan cuon MANUAL do di? (66F84F)
you let me borrow CLA manual that FINAL-PRT
‘Can you lend me that manual?’
(98) Tao dang-lam ESSAY md. (69F78R)
I PRE-V-work essay FINAL-PRT
‘I need it for my essay.’
(99) Tao COPY roi tra lien a. (66F84F)
I copy then return immediately FINAL-PRT
‘I’ll just make a copy then return it to you immediately.’
(100) May ch& hai tuan nira di. (69F78R)
you wait two week more FINAL-PRT
‘Could you wait for two weeks.’
(101) Co kho qua thoi khoi
‘miss difficult very stop not
d i ME GET IT FROM LIBRARY vay. (66F84F)
let me get it from library FINAL-PRT
‘How difficult you are, don’t worry I’ll get it from the library then.’
(102) Tao dang can ma. (69F78R)
I PRE-V-need FINAL-PRT
‘I need it now.’
66F84F is a university student who missed two lectures. She went to her
friend 69F78R’s home to borrow a computer manual. This conversation
was recorded by 69F78R.
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C O D E -SW IT C H IN G OF PERSO N A L PRO N O U NS
At first, 66F84F uses the personal pronouns tao ‘I’ and may ‘thou/thee’
to construct an informal solidarity with the addressee. It should be recalled
that the use of the addressor-and-addressee reference pair tao ... may can
communicate either informal solidarity or the negation of solidarity. Its
usage depends on the relationship between the speakers. In (97), 66F84F’s
linguistic usage of tao ... may is appropriate in light of her social
relationship with 69F78R, who is expected to comply with 66F84F’s
request. When 66F84F’s request is turned down, 66F84F uses the common
noun co (aunt/miss) instead of the previously used personal pronouns tao
and may. The use of co immediately implies at least a temporary negation
of the affectionate friendship relation. 66F84F also attempts to distance
herself from her friend by switching to the English personal pronoun me,
which is followed by an English sentence.
This is not the end of the story. At this point, one may wonder why is
it that 66F84F did not switch to another term of the Vietnamese reference
system which in itself is rich in both lexical items and meaning, instead of
switching to the English personal pronoun ‘me’ which is pragmatically
neutral? The possible answer lies in the regularities in the use of
Vietnamese personal reference.
As seen in setting (B), 66F84F sets off the conversation by using the
personal pronouns tao . . . may for addressor and addressee references.
The use of these linguistic forms implies not only stable solidarity but
also congruence between the participants because the first person tao in
its self-reference use co-occurs with the second person may , not with
any common noun or any other personal pronoun. In the light of the rule
regulating the use of these linguistic forms, 66F84F’s use of co for
addressee reference would indicate denial of the co-membership of the
addressor and the addressee. As a matter of fact, the use of such
common nouns as co ‘Miss’ or bd ‘Mrs’ between speakers of equal
status, such as between friends or husband/wife, for addressee reference
is usually to negate the solidarity nature of a close relation. In general,
the shift from one personal reference term to another marks a change in
the addressor’s attitude. Along the same lines, the switch from co - a
term which had already marked the negation of the close relation in this
speech context - to the English personal pronoun ‘me’ can be seen as a
device that is used to emphasise the intense conflict between the
speakers.
According to the basic assumption of the Markedness Model, the
meaning of code-switching arises as either a conventional (unmarked) or
unconventional (marked) choice for the speech context in which it occurs.
To Myers-Scotton, code-switching is at the service of the individual’s
125
intentions, and the individual’s intentions are the basis of all commu
nicative meaning. Following Myers-Scotton’s argumentation, in setting
(B), 66F84F’s knowledge of the unmarked RO set can be seen through the
use of personal pronouns ta o ... mày at the outset of the conversation. The
regularities in the use of address terms in Vietnamese require that specific
pairs of address terms (personal pronoun with personal pronoun, kinship
term with kinship term) should be consistently co-concurrent to maintain
the established relations between speakers, or can be changed at the
addressor’s intention to create a desired situation. When 66F84F switched
to English, she tries to establish a new role relationship between herself
and her friend. Thus the function of marked choice noted by Myers-
Scotton is fulfilled in this conversational context.
The following examples render support to Myers-Scotton’s Markedness
Model:
(C) Setting: A son (76M88S) tells his father (40M88S) about a car accident
in which he hit another car.
(103) Chà ló ra tr ita c mà con dang chay thing
he pop up before while child PRE-V-run straight
dir&ng chinh mà. (76M88S)
road main FINAL-PRT
‘He popped up while I was driving on the main road.’
(104) Cung tai con chay dir qua. (40M88S)
also because child run aggressive very
‘Because you drove too fast.’
(105) Khóng dir thàng chà ló cà cài dau
not aggresive CLA-boy pop up whole CLA head
con cài. (76M88S)
more argue
‘Not that fast the front of his car popped up yet he even argued.’
(106) Óng ta già chira? (40M88S)
he old yet
‘Is he old?’
(107) Chà H E ’S ABOUT YOUR AGE DAD ókng hói bàng lài
he he’s about your age dad he ask driving licence
con nira. (76M88S)
child more
‘He is about your age, dad. He even asked me to show my driving
licence.’
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(D) Setting: A women (72F79F) describes a fictional story to the

interviewer.
(108) Cuôn sâch này cô câi cô này bi tat
CLA book this has CLA miss this PASSIVE splash/throw
a-xit nguyên câi mat
acid whole CLA face
bên trâi cô bi hw h'êt. (72F79F)
side left miss PASSIVE damage totally FINAL-PRT
‘This book tells about a girl who was attacked with the acid solution,
the left part of her face was scarred.’
Interviewer: Sao, bi tat dânh ghen à?
why PASSIVE throw hit jealous FINAL-PRT
‘Why, is she hit because of a love affair?’
(109) Châng phài lue do cô
not right when there miss
SHE’S ABOUT SEVEN OR EIGHT ONE TIME HER DAD
she’s about seven or eight one time her dad
vê nhà bât gap me SHE WITH ANOTHER MAN nên
go home catch-up mother she with another man so
ba SHÈ lây a-xit tat me SHE nhwng-mà
father she take acid throw mother she but
trüng SHE. (72F79F)
catch she
‘No when she was about seven or eight years old one day her dad
went home just to see her mother was with another man, her father
attacked her mother with the acid solution but unfortunately it ended
up on her face.’
In setting (C), the use of the personal pronoun châ by 76M88S implies
hostility towards its referent. The form chà is either rude or denotes the
greatest antagonism to the referent. In comparison to any other form of
third person reference, chà indexically marks the speaker’s hostility to the
third party.
To reinforce his negative perception of the man who caused the
accident, 76M88S a moment later adds the form thàng to chà (thàng chà).
Thàng is exclusively used to refer to young boys. The combination of
thàng and chà underlies the strong antagonism to the third party in this
conversation. According to the rule of name rectification which regulates
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the choice of verbal behaviour, the younger must use appropriate address
terms in referring to the older. His father (40M88S) notices the usage of
this combined form, and wants to clarify the identity of the man by asking
about his age. Being aware of the inextricable connection of person
reference terms to interactional contexts, 76M88S switched to the English
personal pronoun ‘he’. 76M88S’s code-switching may have a dual
purpose: first, to deliberately negate the address terms he has just used,
second, to avoid repeating using an inappropriate term in reference to an
older person. In this way, 76M88S places himself in a lower status vis-à-
vis the third party in terms of age distance.
76M88S’s awareness of the pragmatic effects of linguistic usage is
further evident in that he switched from ‘he’ to the form ong for the third
party reference. The code-switching in setting (C) is clearly indicative of
some kind of ‘social motivation’ - to use Myers-Scotton’s terms - and is
an instance of ‘code-switching as a marked choice’.
A similar case is found in the speech of 72F79F in setting (D). In this
example, 72F79F relates a fictional story about a girl whose face is badly
scarred for life after having been attacked with acid solution. By asking if
the girl in the story is a victim of an affair, the interviewer wants to know
whether this is the reason why someone threw acid at her. The question
was raised because at the outset of the conversation, 72F79F uses the third
person co which gives an impression of, and refers to, a young female, not
of and to a girl of seven or eight years old. 72F79F immediately corrects
her speech by switching to the English personal pronoun ‘she’, which is
understood as a general term for a female regardless of age in English.
77F79F then keeps repeating the English personal pronoun ‘she’ in regard
to the girl for the rest of the conversation. It seems as if the repetition of
‘she’ can be conceived as being purposeful and rational to reaffirm the
principal character in the story: the seven year-old-girl, not anyone else
who is qualified to be addressed as co. In other words, the use of ‘she’ is
the linguistic equivalent of creating the position of the girl without risk of
violating the regularities in the use of Vietnamese person-reference terms.
The overall interpretation of code-switching from examples (91) to
(109) would indicate the usefulness of Myers-Scotton’s Markedness
Model. First, the Markedness Model concerns the negotiation of identities
by means of code-switching indexing RO sets. In this theoretical model,
code-switching is indicative of some kind of consensus about mutual
relationships between the referents (addressor, addressee, and third parties)
in a conversational interaction.
Second, another premise of Myers-Scotton’s Model is the co-operative
principle based on Grice (1975). According to Grice, the co-operative
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efforts of the interactants are to some degree governed by ‘a rough general

principle which participants will be expected ... to observe, namely: make
your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which
it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged’ (Grice 1975: 45). Grice associates this principle
with four categories which he calls ‘quantity’, ‘quality’, ‘relation’, and
‘manner’. Each of these categories may consist of several specific maxims
which regulate conversational behaviour. Grice (1975: 45-6) outlines these
categories as follows:
• Quantity: make your contribution as informative as required (for the
current purposes of the exchange); and do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
• Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true; do not say what
you believe to be false; and do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence.
• Relation: be relevant.
• Manner: avoid obscurity of expression; avoid ambiguity; be brief (avoid
unnecessary prolixity); and be orderly.
Grice notes that the first three categories relate to what is said, whereas the
fourth one relates to how something is said (p. 46). He also states that
‘talkers ... will in general ... proceed in the manner that these principles
prescribe’ (p. 47-8).
As has been mentioned in Section 5.2.1, patterns of conversation are
indeed culturally dependent (cf. Clyne 1987b). Consequently, the alleged
universality of the Gricean conversational principle has been challenged
by a number of linguists. For instance, apology may be effective because it
may fulfil social expectations rather than any condition related to
truthfulness (maxim of quality). Hymes (1986) makes this point clear by
stating that only if these maxims are reinterpreted as dimensions of
behaviour can one claim their universality. In the words of Hymes (1986:
73): ‘It can reasonably be assumed that any community will have some
orientation to the dimension of quality (truthfulness), of quantity
(informativeness), of relevance, of manner (clarity)’. It may be added
here that these maxims sound more like rules prescribing what one should
say in a job interview rather than those describing everyday verbal
communication.
Although studies of conversational behaviour have provided evidence
to challenge the generality of Grice’s co-operative principle (e.g. Eades
1982; Matsumoto 1989; Clyne 1994), such challenges do not mean that
similarities in language use do not exist. To some extent, there are
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similarities in cultures due to cultural contact. In this sense, the

significance of Grice’s work cannot be underestimated, and it is his
co-operative principle on which Myers-Scotton’s bases her Markedness
Model (Myers-Scotton 1993a: 97). Applying this principle to account for
her theory of code-switching, Myers-Scotton argues that speech
participants usually make their communicative choices between codes in
accordance with the expected purpose of the conversation. To Myers-
Scotton, when each switch starts, it is produced with an intention from the
speaker because the speaker wants to do ‘some social work’ (p. 100).
Upon hearing a switch, the addressee will reconstruct the speaker’s
intention. In this way, the meaning of code-switching is intentional
meaning.
In general, Myers-Scotton relates the co-operative principle to
code-switching by stating that this principle underlies all code choices,
and ‘all code choices can ultimately be explained in terms of such speaker
motivations’ (p. 113). Understandably, for co-operation to occur, it is
assumed that the speakers know the rules of verbal behaviour operating in
their community. In the words of Myers-Scotton (1993a: 88):
As speakers come to recognise the different RO sets possible in
their community, they develop a sense of indexicality of code
choices for these RO sets ... However, of course, specific
readings of indexicality only emerge when speakers experience
language in use in their own community. But because everyone
starts with the same equipment (the unmarked metric) and has
relatively similar experiences, a consensus emerges within the
community.
In this view, speakers enter conversation with mutual role relationships
which are based on their ‘relatively similar experiences’. This view might
be questionable as to how speakers, such as people in African nations in
Myers-Scotton’s study, could have relatively similar experiences in terms
of which language (English) and ways of speaking are commonly
accessible resources. To Myers-Scotton, people behave in similar ways
and, thanks to this common factor, they establish among themselves a
social relationship by means of joint association between codes and what
they index. Indeed, the view that holds that there is an association between
speech activities and language varieties (cf. Fishman 1971) is put in doubt
as Auer (1995: 118) states:
In modem bilingual societies, the relationship between languages
and speech activities is by no means unambiguous. Many speech
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activities are not tied to one particular language, and even among
those which have a tendency to be realised more often in one
language than in another, the correlation is never strong enough to
predict language choice in more than a probabilistic way.
Indeed, the relationship between language varieties and speech activities is
not a clear-cut one. However, given that there is to a certain extent a shared
knowledge of expectations in conversation between interlocutors with
regard to the regularities in the use of person-reference forms in
Vietnamese, Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model provides a theoretical
framework, and the most salient feature of the Markedness Model is that
interlocutors are assumed to have common knowledge for appropriate
sociolinguistic behaviour. In this view then, the norms and regularities in
the use of address terms in Vietnamese are the shared knowledge of
speakers of Vietnamese. To put it differently, the Vietnamese system of
person reference is a shared linguistic resource. This resource is equally
accessible by most of speakers of the language. Given this available
resource and the knowledge of how to use it, the speaker will retrieve
appropriate address terms in accordance with the conversation in which
the speaker enters.
To clarify this point further, I will attempt here to compare the notions
of resource and access in different speech situations: Vietnamese-English
bilinguals in this study and people of African nations in Myers-Scotton’s
study (1993a). Myers-Scotton claims that \ .. because everyone [speakers
in African nations] starts with the same equipment (the markedness metric)
and has relatively similar experiences, a consensus emerges within the
community’ (p. 88). Her claim indicates that the communicative resource
(e.g. English) in African nations is somehow equally distributed among
groups and individuals by means of social mechanism such as education or
law. But as Myers-Scotton also notes that access to English is dependent on
access to higher education ( \ .. real access to this language comes through
extended formal education, and such education is tied to privilege’ p. 28),
therefore access to linguistic resources is quite limited and as a result of
this it is unequally distributed among groups and individuals.
Turning now to the Vietnamese-English bilinguals, knowledge of the
regularities in the use of person-reference terms, as presented in Section
5.2, is undoubtedly shared among themselves. In other words, this
knowledge is an available resource to which the participants in the
conversation can access. As demonstrated in examples (93) and (96), when
a new speech situation arises during the conversation, the speakers shift
from one type of Vietnamese address term to another or switch to English
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personal pronouns. Their code-switching is in line with what Myers-

Scotton’s Markedness Model would expect: code-switching signals the
addressor’s intention to change the social relationship with the addressee.
In Myers-Scotton’s view, it negotiates identities by means of code choices.
A similar interpretation can be applied to example (97). In this example,
the Vietnamese personal pronouns may ... tao prevailing at the outset of
the conversation can be seen as an instance of informal exchange between
friends. When 66F84F switches to English, she wants to change the role
relations. In Myers-Scotton’s term, 66F84F switches to ‘negotiate’ greater
social distance than is normal in this situation whereas 69F78R keeps
using the informal (Vietnamese) form of address {tao) to maintain the role
relationship which she prefers to prevail.
The remaining examples can also be interpreted as instances of
code-switching as a marked choice. In settings (C) and (D), the speakers
switch to English personal pronouns to negotiate the status of the referred
third parties. In (C), status refers to the age of the referent whereas in (D) it
refers to the third party’s gender.
It is also possible to provide an alternative analysis for the overall
interpretation of code-switching in (C) and (D). In her Markedness Model,
Myers-Scotton provides us with another type of code-switching which she
calls ‘exploratory code-switching’. By ‘exploratory code-switching’,
Myers-Scotton provides for those cases in which the speaker’s knowledge
of the unmarked RO sets is unclear, or cases where the speaker differs in
their ideas about the unmarked RO sets.
It appears that ‘exploratory code-switching’ is a useful explanation of
code-switching, especially because it can account for code-switching in
(C) and (D). First, in setting (C), the use of Vietnamese third person
reference cha and thang cha can be explained in view of the assumption
that the son is either not sure what term in the Vietnamese person
reference is appropriate, or he may be aware of the appropriate usage
of person-reference terms but intend to employ such negative terms to
enforce his hostility to the third party. In either case, the RO set (terms of
person reference) is available but not retrievable immediately by the son
due to the highly complicated nature of the Vietnamese reference system.
When his father wants him to clarify the identity of the third party, the son
then switches to English. The code-switching in this example can be
explained in terms of Myers-Scotton’s concept of exploratory code
switching: the interactants differ in their ideas about the unmarked RO set
in the conversation.
Along the same line, in setting (D), the code-switching of 72F79F can
be dictated by Myers-Scotton’s exploratory code-switching: 72F79F
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switches to English to define the identity of the girl in the story (i.e. age
and gender) whom she inaccurately refers to as co. Her code-switching
indicates that she is at a loss as to how to define the girl’s status at the
outset of the conversation.
5.5 CONCLUSION
It has been recognised in the code-switching literature that code-switching
is a universal phenomenon in multilingual communities but its functions
(in Myers-Scotton’s terms: its social motivation) may be different in
different communities. Taking into account this observation and the
specific characteristics of the overall picture of speech interaction in
Vietnamese bilingual speakers in Melbourne, this chapter has attempted to
explain the occurrence of pronoun code-switching in the corpus in the
following ways:
i First, it has presented the rule-governed uses of linguistic forms in the
Vietnamese system of person reference. In Vietnamese, the use of
appropriate address terms is indispensable to every utterance in all
speech contexts. Its use is inextricably related to extralinguistic factors
such as personal identity, age, gender, degree of solidarity and
co-operation. Not only does its use designate the participants, but it
also concurrently creates interactional contexts. In terms of Myers-
Scotton’s Markedness Model, the appropriate use of person-reference
forms is the unmarked rights-and-obligations set. Therefore, the
presentation of the Vietnamese system of person reference is an
important step towards applying the Markedness Model in analysing
the code-switching of personal pronouns in this study.
ii Second, this chapter has applied Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model.
The model offers an insight into how code-switching of personal
pronouns fulfils one of the communicative functions associated with
Vietnamese language and culture. The model makes sense in that it
considers code-switching in any conversation as a strategy to negotiate
identities. Although the model’s claim of universality does not, as
expected, receive entire support from other studies of code-switching,
for example Swigart’s study of Wolof-French code-switching in Dakar
(1992), the examination of my corpus demonstrates that the model is a
useful approach to code-switching because of the following factors.
First, the approach rests on the principle that code-switching signals
the addressor’s intention to change the social relationship with the
participants in the conversation. Considering the important function of
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the use of address terms in the Vietnamese language, the model is

suitable for explaining how in Vietnamese a change in address terms
signals a change in relations between the participants. Second, and as
the by-product of the first factor, Myers-Scotton’s Model is
specifically useful if it is applied in conjunction with a special focus
on the sociolinguistic aspects of the particular society in which
code-switching occurs. In fact, the idea that any linguistic phenomenon
should be treated along the sociocultural context in which it takes
place is suggested in the literature (e.g. Hymes 1966). In this respect,
the social motivation behind the code-switching of personal pronouns
presented in this chapter is the indispensable regularities in the use of
the Vietnamese system of person reference.
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Chapter 6
Conclusion
6.1 GENERAL CONCLUSION

Suzanne Romaine begins her Bilingualism (1995) by stating that it would
certainly be odd to read a book with the title Monolingualism , yet
monolingualism is the basic construct on which most linguistic theories
are based (Romaine 1995: 1).
In terms of language contact, her remark indicates the importance of not
taking a monolingual perspective in dealing with various aspects of
bilingualism. A finding that has been reported frequently in the literature
on language contact is that when two languages are in contact, they will be
affected in many respects. The effect of contact with another language is
evident in immigrant communities (e.g. Clyne 1985; Romaine 1991). In
Australia, while English remains unchallenged as the dominant language
of the country, the Vietnamese language, as one of the minority languages,
is not free of English influence. And yet, as suggested by Romaine (1995),
the study of bilingualism, which has resulted in code-switching as one of
many and varied linguistic phenomena, has taken monolingualism as the
underlying construct on which the analysis of code-switching is based. To
put it differently, the study of code-switching requires the description and
analysis of pairs of languages in contact: in the case of this study
Vietnamese and English.
This study has attempted to present the phenomenon of code-switching
in the speech of Vietnamese-English bilinguals in Melbourne. It has an
explorative character since this is the first concerning the phenomenon of
code-switching between the Vietnamese language and another language.
As the dimensions of the field of code-switching between Vietnamese
and English are far from being established, this study faced the lack of
relevant literature on Vietnamese. Fortunately, the wealth of research
focusing on a range of issues - from bilingualism to one of its central issues
known as code-switching - carried out by Western linguists generally has
given this study access to the world’s literature on code-switching. On the
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basis of many insightful studies in this field, this study was able to apply
some of the findings. In Chapter 3, we saw that Poplack and Sankoff’s
Equivalence Constraint was on the whole applicable. It is shown that many
instances of code-switching between Vietnamese and English occur
frequently at structural positions which are compatible to both languages.
This is because basically both Vietnamese and English have a similar word
order. Despite this fact, the Equivalence Constraint does not account for all
incidences of code-switching between this language pair, as there are
instances which show that code-switching occurs at those structurally
incompatible places between the two languages.
Many similar findings have been reported in other studies in which the
validity of the Equivalence Constraint was checked against data from
relatively incompatible pairs of languages, especially between typologi-
cally different pairs of languages (e.g. Turkish-English in Pfaff 1990;
Dutch-English and German-English in Clyne 1991a; Adanme-English in
Nartey 1982; Spanish-Hebrew in Berg-Seligson 1986; Dutch-Moroccan
Arabic in Nortier 1989; Finnish-English in Poplack, Wheeler and
Westwood 1987, among others). Findings in these studies indicate that
the Equivalence Constraint does not seem to be as universally valid as it is
claimed to be.
The same can be said of Di Sciullo, Muysken and Singh’s (1986)
Government Constraints. These authors argue that constraints on code
switching can be embedded into general linguistic theory, and that code
switching cannot take place between a governor and its complement. We
saw in Chapter 3 that there were instances of code-switching between
prepositions and their complements. Generally, the few counter-examples
can be seen as a contribution to previous studies which lend support to
the objections to the generality and universality of the Equivalence and the
Government Constraints.
On the other hand, Clyne’s notion of convergence (1987a), and
Muysken’s concept of categorial equivalence (1991, 1995) are useful as
they can account for switching of a number of word classes. As was
discussed in Chapter 2, Muysken (1991) reiterates that it is not possible to
make absolute claims, but only to make probabilistic claims about
grammatical constraints on code-switching. Under his notion of
‘categorical equivalence’, code-switching of a particular word class
is possible when such a word class exists in both languages and is
considered to be equivalent by speakers of both languages. Muysken’s
perspective is applicable in accounting for switching of a number of word
classes, especially the switching of prepositions in the corpus of this
study.
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The analysis of code-switching in relation to topics shows that there is a

correlation between code-switching patterns and specific topics which the
informants were describing. The finding is that the proportion of code
switching is higher when the informants were describing topics which are
linked to an English setting than those that were related to a Vietnamese
context. It is argued that the English setting ‘triggers’ code-switching
(Clyne 1967). This leads to the suggestion that there may be some effect of
extralinguistic factors on code-switching (see Gal 1979).
The discussion of patterns of code-switching across the three sub-groups
was based on the concept of social network discussed in Milroy (1980),
Milroy and Li (1995) and Romaine (1994). It was found that the three
sub-groups engage in code-switching and that they all make use of similar
patterns of code-switching. This may be due to the likelihood that
Vietnamese-English bilinguals in the three areas of Melbourne are
involved in relatively similar types of interpersonal networks, and are in
contact with one another.
The likely outcome of contact between more or less typologically
similar languages, as suggested by Romaine (1995) and Clyne (1985,
1987, 1991a), gives this study the idea of taking into account the
differences between features of the two languages under research. The
result is that Chapter 4 took into consideration the possible effect of a tonal
language (Vietnamese) and a non-tonal language (English) coming into
contact. The outcome is the suggestion of the potential influence of
Vietnamese tones on code-switching. Although one of the aspects of the
findings is that high and mid-level tones are related to code-switching, the
finding is seen as representing a trend rather than a rule-governed use of
code-switching between a tonal language and a non-tonal one.
Along this line, in Chapter 5, we saw that the occurrence of English
personal pronouns was due to the rule-governed use of linguistic forms
in the Vietnamese system of person reference. The argument was placed in
the context of Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model (1993a).
Generally, the findings in this study have some implications about the
study of aspects of bilingualism. First, it is not possible to formulate
absolute constraints that are applicable in all bilingual communities. It
seems that any attempt to do so should take into account the typological
characteristics of the languages in contact, as well as aspects of
sociolinguistic settings to which the incidence of code-switching is related.
It should follow from this that language contact data from a wide range of
language pairs is needed to be used as a useful source on which attempts to
formulate theoretical models can be based. Such a need is pointed out by
Clyne (1987a: 762).
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The literature on bilingualism has shown that theoretical models often

emerged from (and were a result of) the directions from which linguists
approached code-switching. With regard to models for code-switching,
this is an indicator of broadening applicability: code-switching would be
better accounted for through an interdisciplinary perspective. As Romaine
(1995: 180) puts it: ‘More collaborative work is needed between
psycholinguists and sociolinguists to develop models of processing and
production which can handle code-switching. Such models should then be
used to inform and test grammatical theories’ (see also Milroy and
Muysken 1995).
Second, the exploratory nature of this study does not allow for an
overall picture of the sociolinguistic patterns of the Vietnamese in
Australia as a whole, especially of code-switching patterns of the
Vietnamese in Melbourne. However, the findings offer several aspects
of the linguistic patterns of the Vietnamese. To a certain extent this may
facilitate research towards a theoretical model which can account for
various aspects of language contact and code-switching, and for the relation
of minority languages to the dominant language in the multilingual
Australian context.
On the basis of the findings, and as Australia had become one of the
most multicultural countries, it is possible to use some of the findings in
this study as an underlying yardstick for comparing the linguistic
behaviour of the Vietnamese in other multilingual situations, as suggested
in Section 6.2.
.At the same time, and within the Australian context, it is possible to
make a comparative analysis of the code-switching patterns of the
Vietnamese and that of other immigrant communities. Such a comparative
study is needed, as Clyne (1991b: 225-6) points out:
... only a small number of the 75-100 languages used regularly in
Australia have so far been described. They are nearly all
Indo-European and do not offer a wide range of typological
characteristics ... It would be most desirable for morphological
and syntactic transference and change and the grammatical
integration of lexical transfers to be examined in a variety of
languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Khmer, Maltese,
Tamil, Tongan, Turkish, and Vietnamese. This would facilitate
conclusions on linguistic and sociolinguistic universals of
language contact.
In view of the fact that a comparison of code-switching studies between
different language pairs can help uncover language-specific features of the
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code-switching phenomenon, this initial study was attempted with the

hope that it would contribute to a better understanding of various aspects
of code-switching as resulting from the meeting between a language of the
West and a language of the East.
After all, if language is central to human life, then code-switching is
indispensable because it is the vessel which connects two languages. In
this sense code-switching is a reality, or a form of expression in the lives of
the bilingual. Since the form of expression is reproduced ever anew, it
needs to be re-investigated so that additional aspects of code-switching can
be uncovered. To this end, the following section suggests some areas of
further research.
6.2 SUGGESTED AREAS OF FURTHER RESEARCH

The general approach in this thesis may be useful in carrying on further
research in areas which the present work has not included. One such area
is the description of how code-switching may influence the language
acquisition process of Vietnamese children. As Vietnamese expatriates
have entered the third decade of living outside their original country,
another possible area for future study would be the comparison of
code-switching patterns between the first and the second generations
of Vietnamese-Australians. Indeed, such comparative studies have been
carried out extensively in other languages (e.g. Nishimura 1985, 1995; Li
1995).
This study has focused on code-switching between Vietnamese (as a
tonal and isolating language) and English (as a non-tonal and inflected
language). It would be desirable for research to be conducted on aspects of
language contact between more or less inflected languages (English/
German) and between inflected and agglutinative languages (English/
Finnish). At the same time, as the Vietnamese reside almost all over the
world, further studies of code-switching between Vietnamese and the
language of the country in which they reside might produce different
patterns of code-switching due to different sociolinguistic situations. For
example, code-switching between Vietnamese and English in America,
French in France or Quebec, German in Germany, Finnish and Swedish in
Finland, Norwegian in Norway. Additional data in this area might
contribute to a better knowledge of the phenomenon of code-switching.
Along this line, it would be possible to conduct research on areas
concerning language choice, language attrition and language use among
children of the first immigrant generation, as well as concerning the roles
of Vietnamese and the major languages of the society in which the
139
C O NC LUSIO N
Vietnamese live. These areas have become a major concern in the

literature as evidence shows that use of minority languages are fading
among children of the immigrant generation. Boyd (1987), for instance,
shows in her study of multilingualism among second generation immigrant
youth in Sweden that there is considerable instability in bilingualism
among immigrant youth which, according to Boyd, can ultimately lead to
the disappearance of the immigrant generation (see also Boyd et al. 1991).
Their findings indicate that such research could help provide a better
knowledge of how to slow down the rapid linguistic assimilation of
immigrant young people to the dominant language.
The features of tones in relation to code-switching as found in this
study is another area which may need further research, be it between the
same language pair (Vietnamese and English) or between English and
another tonal language, for example, Yoruba, Thai, or Chinese (Cantonese,
Mandarin). From my prima facie findings that tone in Vietnamese and
Vietnamese perception of stress in English as being tonal can facilitate
code-switching, there is a need to conduct empirical analysis of stress
patterns of the English words inserted in different tone environments and
the interaction between tones and stress patterns of the English words.
Such empirical analysis may use a Kay Elemetrics Sona-Graph phonetic
analysis system using a CSL package permitting spectrographic analysis to
analyse wave form at the point of code-switching. Possible results will
certainly contribute original dimensions of significance to the ongoing
discussion on universal constraints on code-switching which have yet to
take into account possible effects of tones in facilitating code-switching.
We would see that the involvement of the Vietnamese language in the
process of code-switching remains a relatively unexplored area which is
awaiting further exploration. In this regard, it is hoped that this initial
attempt will generate ideas which might be taken up in the future.
140
Appendix 1
Sample questionnaire
1 Date and place of birth.

2 Date of migration to Australia. Gender?
3 Home language of parents?
4 How many years of schooling have you received in Vietnam and
Australia?
5 With whom do you live?
6 What language do you speak at home?
7 Did you learn English before emigrating to Australia? For how long?
8 How do you learn English in Australia?
9 How do you usually spend a typical day at work?
10 How do you spend your leisure hours?
11 What organisations are you a member of?
12 Do you see movies in Australia? How often?
13 What language do you normally speak with your friends?
14 Please tell me about the film you have liked most?
15 Please tell me the contents of a book you have read recently?
16 When you were in Vietnam, how did you spend your day?
17 Do you read Vietnamese/English books and newspapers?
18 What is your main impression of life in Vietnam?
19 What is your main impression of life in Australia?
20 Do you know about any social change in Vietnam now?
21 Have you ever experienced difficulties since living in Australia?
22 Would you please describe this picture?
23 What do you usually do at home?
24 Are you an ethnic Chinese? (excluded from the sample if the answer is
‘Yes’)
25 Do you have any relatives in Melbourne?
141
Appendix 2
List of informants
Codename Born M: male; F: Female Arrived Area

76M82F 1976 M 1982 Footscray
76M88S 1976 M 1988 Springvale
73F79S 1973 F 1979 Springvale
72F79F 1972 F 1979 Footscray
69F78R 1969 F 1978 Richmond
66M85R 1966 M 1985 Richmond
143
LI ST OF IN FO R M A NTS
Codename Born M: male; F: Female Arrived Area

144
Appendix 3
Extracted sample interviews
The passages in italics are spoken by the interviewer.

1 The informant is a university student, in her early twenties, who came to
Australia in 1979.
Em kS cho anh cai truyen nao em thich di?
WHAT ABOUT A MAGAZINE, em doc em doc cuon MAGAZINE chi x
cho.
Cai nao?
OH OH WAIT cuon MAGAZINE CLEO GIRLFRIEND.
Em nh& gi khong?
Nho* chir OK co co SEX TALK anh I CAN’T SPEAK IN VIETNAMESE

noi tieng Anh dirge khong?
Noi tieng Viet ch&.
Tai em khong biet MAGAZINE la sach gi, noi tieng Anh ha, mac cirdi
qua.
Neu noi khong dwcrc thoi k i mot phim nao di.
Coi FILM ha, em co coi THE LOVER, em di vcri chi T chi T OK co ong
nay khoang ba miro-i may tu6i, ong la ngirai Tau & Phap, ong qua Viet
Nam cai ong cua con nho Tay ngirai Phap ma no mcri mu’d’i sau tu6i,
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? mircri sau tu6i roi cai hm hai ngirai thich
nhau ma PHYSICAL khong a NO YEAH co NO khong co khong co tai
thang nay ba no ARRANGED MARRIAGE YEAH ong mcri ba mu’O’i,
ong Ion ho*n m irai lam tu6i miro’i bon tu6i gi do, khong thu’O'ng dau
tai nha no ngheo lam, cai no ngu vo*i ong YOU KNOW YEAH roi no
lay tien do, roi no khong co thu’O'ng ma thang nay thirong no lam
YEAH.
145
EXT RA C TE D SA MPLE INT ERVIEW S
Roi sao?
Hm thi no cai thang do lay vo* con nh6 kia SAVE UP A LOT OF MONEY
roi di ve Phap, YEAH ma hoi no len tau di THAT’S WHEN SHE KNEW
YOU KNOW HM SHE REALLY LOVED HIM TOO LATE cai hoi no len
tau co chiec xe cua thang do tai no giau lam no co CHAUFFEUR YEAH.
Vay thoi a?
NO NO no dau co ve Phap no con nho len tau YEAH tai no 6* Viet Nam
roi no khong co tien, cai ma no keu du thang nay dSn no di cho'i roi cho
tien, cai het gia dinh co tien du ve Phap, roi thang nay o' Viet Nam vcri vo*
no, YEAH MARRIAGE ARRANGED MARRIAGE ba no dau co chiu, tai
no cung noi vcri ba no tai no thirong con nho Tay nay ma ba no khong
chiu, roi ARRANGED MARRIAGE luon.
Thircrng mdi ngay em lam gi?
OK sang, em thirc day khodng IS IT khoang? YEAH I DON’T KNOW

chin gio* ru'O’i an sang, cai em do*i ba thu*c day, NO em nghe nhac cai em
dep nha mot chut, em do*i ba thirc cai em hm di hoc, ba cho* em di len
MONASH MONASH LIBRARY hoc, hoc ba tieng cai em an LUNCH roi
cai em an LUNCH mot tieng, em tro* lai LIBRARY hoc nira tcri nam gio*
sau gio* cai RELAX YEAH cai an DINNER hoc nira SOMETIMES em
coi FILM nghe nhac, dep buong tiep chi x roi ngu.
Thoi bay g ia ta may birc tranh nay di nhe?
Phong khach em thay cung MODERN vcri nha nay chac nghe nhac nhieu
l&m, v&i doc sach coi sach nhieu cung sach nira ne co CD vo*i may dia nha
nay cai nay la phong khach, cai nay la KITCHEN COOK do hm hai ba noi
chuyen uong tra COOFEE cung vui, chac noi chuyen dai xira co hai dan ba
may ngu'O'i nay khung qua de cai nay tren day ne dk EGGS cai hinh nay la
chac IS IT VIETNAM phai khong? ASIAN COUNTRY thay ngu'O'i ta kh6
em thay buon, kh6 cai ch5 tam buon SO SAD may dira nho cung om nira,
em thay may cai BUILDING nay 6* EUROPE thi em thay ARCHITEC
TURE cai nay cung ROMANTIC YEAH em thay, cai nay cung dong ngu'O'i
WHAT IS IT THE PARK cai PARK may ngu'O'i gia vui, co nu'6'c xanh.
A em mcri doc cuon MAGAZINE GIRLFRIEND em doc cai HORO
SCOPE WAIT noi thang nay em phdi du lich MEET nhieu ngu'O'i vcri phai
ra vcri em co trircmg o' HIGH SCHOOL ne I MEAN ban & HIGH
SCHOOL co ban o' UNI o' RMIT khong a trong cuon sach cuon
MAGAZINE no noi vcri em phai ra UNI tim ban mcri JUST HM NEW
HORIZON THAT WAS IT SAID AND IT SAID GOOD tot.
146
EX T RA C TE D SAM PL E INT ERVIEWS
2 The informant is a public servant, in his mid-thirties, who emigrated in

1985.
Moi ngáy vó s a óng lám cái gi?
Cüng urn lám binh thiró'ng, nhirng má lúe náy nó lá SELF MANAGE
MENT TEAM á khóng có khóng có BOSS khóng gi a tir minh lám, lá
khóng có SUPERVISOR, thi bó*i vay, nó sáp síra nó dán tó*i cái nó kéu cái
dó lá NEIGHBOURHOOD TEAM NEIGHBOURHOOD UNIT có nghía
lá anh lám hét tát cá luón, ve MAINTENANCE anh lám dü hét luón, bó
cái tháng MAINTENANCE, sáp rói.
Van phóng có may ngtrfri?
Nám ngirói, coi nhir lá ba hien tai báy gió* lá ba HOUSING OFFICER
mot SUPERVISOR vó*i lai mot con RECEPTIONIST má mai mot lá
khóng có SUPERVISOR luón.
Tire lá nó ha cái chtrc con chia xuong?
Khóng con kia nó sé, nó sé TRANSFER qua lám TEAM LEADER TEAM
LEADER cua cái NEIGHBOURHOOD TEAM thi nhimg má írm có cái
nó cüng phái lám viec nhir lá HOUSING OFFICER vay, có cái nó lá
TEAM LEADER có nghía lá, cho ráng nó lá có kinh nghiem có náy no dé
nó ADVISE ngu’ó’i khác chxr that su* ra cái viec cua nó vá cái viec cúa
HOUSING OFFICER giong nhau nó vSn diro*c tién nhiéu hon, nó ván
bon con thi du nhir HOUSING OFFICER chí ba, nó bó tháng nó chí có bó
tháng AREA MANAGER bó tháng dó, thi dó tai khi kia miró! sáu dú*a
má con có sáu dú*a bó miró'i tháng, nó góm lai báy gió* cái dám dó nó phái
di xin viec nó nó nó doi nó lám mot cái LIST má REEMPLOYEE nó dgi
néu má khóng coó nó váng luón cüng nhir tháng M em chira nghe nói nó
diro*c JOB gi hét.
Nhir vay óng dé tha hojn chír .
Dúng rói coi nhir lá cái con TEAM LEADER dó thirc sir ra hy vong cüng
lám em cüng lám diro*c TEAM LEADER ky náy sáp xép lai coi lám sao
em lám ó* KENSINGTON em thi dó em ó* NORTH MELBOURNE a dói
ve KENSINGTON lám hai tuán roi má em tháy cái dám viet nam o' dáy
nó cháng có lám cái gi ve goi lá cháng có lám ve cái gi ve POLICY
DEVELOPMENT a chí có chui dáu vó lám hét gió* di ve.
Cái dó lá cái gi?
POLICY DEVELOPMENT náy no lá phái coi o' chung quanh minh náy
nó có nhírng cái nhírng cái dich vu gi má có thé giúp dó* nhírng ngirói
147
EXT RA C TE D SAMPL E INTERVIEWS
nhat la tai vi cai khu nay no nhieu sac toe qua ma viet khong lam gi dirge
het do no phai ph6 bien sach bao nay no phai noi cho ngirai ta biet quyen
lgi cua ngircri ta nay no Viet nam minh no khong lam gi het, thing t thi tir
ngay do, no tau viet ma lam me gi con k thi con do con tre qua thanh ra
chira ra lam dirge gi het co ngirai hu*a cho em lam co ngiroi hu*a dira em
lam TEAM LEADER KENSINGTON BOSS a em dgi HAND OVER a co
thing do nhimg thang do khong lam nira chi chiu khong n6i ve NORTH
MELBOURNE lam circ thi tai no muon no dau chiu lam cai con do cai
thu* nhat cai thvr hai nira no hoc PART TIME nira cho nen no dau dk thoi
gicr vo no lam.
Bay gi& ong ta may tarn hinh nay di.
Cai khu ma goi la vimg que co nghia la vung que em dem vay thoi khong
co mot cai gi goi la voc dang gi goi la cua CITY ca a cho* anh thay sao cai
nay nhir la mot cai a mot van phong STOCK EXCHANGE phai ha em
nghi cai nay la mot cai khong ph&i STOCK EXCHANGE khong phai a
dung roi STOCK EXCHANGE chu* TELEPHONE win lai COMPUTER
ne WHITE COLLAR OFFICE cai nay goi a MELBOURNE nhimg ma
MELBOURNE nhin may BUILDING nay MELBOURNE gi nira cai
RIALTO BUILDING nay phai khong dung roi tai no cai dircmg chay
chung quanh bi6n lam cho minh tircmg, cai nay hk cai nay la khuon vien a
PARK cai nay chac la MELBOURNE cai nay RIALTO co BUILDING
SHELL day YEAH ga xe lira ben nay cai nay la BRIDGE no noi ra dircmg
lo phai khong toa soan bao ir AGE THE SUN gi day dung roi HERALD
SUN ne do dung roi.
Em muon noi la da so khong phai dam viet nam lam cho HOUSING la no
vay, tai no khong CONCERN gi het lam vo do lam thoi het gicr cai dam
lam HOUSING OFFICER con phai goi dien thoai len noi chuyen vcri xep
no sao thang do no STUPID qua vay thing do chira no khong bao gio* lam
dirge SUPERVISOR het a ACTING no cung khong lam dirge thang do
no bo lao anh a/ thang do la viet nam HOUSING OFFICER viet nam
khong dira nao cho'i vcri no xin chuyen ve FOOTSCRAY no lam gan nhir
biet khong thi no phai DEAL vcri ben van phong NORTH MELBOURNE
co cai thang an do no hoi em thang do sao co biet no tai no cung lam
HOUSING OFFICER no hoi em cho* may biet gi no phai goi dien thoai
len noi chuyeen vcri SUPERVISOR no tao thay no cham lam, bay gio* no
lam TENANT UNION dircri FOOTSCRAY no lam TENANT UNION no
lam cai dam hiep hoi cir dan no noi con h no noi vcri em la no khong co
NAME no khong noi co nghia la ai no noi co nhieu ngirai viet nam lam
nghia la ta day lam cho chinh phu con do thi no cung khong no OPERATE
148
EXT RA C TE D SA M PL E INT ER VIEWS
cái kièu mà goi là quan chúa vây dó, nó làm PERMANENT chir cüng lâu
làm mà nó làm dirài SOUTH MELBOURNE mà môi lân cài con
SUPERVISOR cü cùa nó eu* nu* em nói o' nëu nó nói em chuyên
DISPUTE nhir vây thi em nói muôn hoc cài càch mà mà HANDLE cài
DISPUTE nhir là em làm diró'i cho cài dàm PRAHAN, nó hoc
WELFARE cài gì em nghï là vây, em nói chuyên goi là kièu mà goi là
PERSONAL thôi, nghe nói nó xin nó nôp dirge cài JOB dó tai vi cái khu
FOOTSCRAY dông ngu'O'i viêt quá thành ra TENANT UNION nó tuyèn
nó con dó nó nói tiëng viêt khóng giói tai có mot hôm di cái FUNCTION
cái nó vô cái FORUM nói chuyên vë à nó có nam sác dân nam sác toc nói
chuyên vë nhìrng ngirài mà goi là sác toc mà goi là không nói tiëng Anh
này no có nhìrng tra ngai ve nhà eira thì nó m ài m a nó nói cài FORUM
thi là môi mot SPEAKER thì nó là SPEAKER cho viêt nam thì nó dirng
lèn nó nói là nó là nó lúe nó rài viêt nam thì nó mó*i chin mirai tuèi thì nó
không rành cài chuyên goi là lich su' viêt nam em nghï trong bung biët me
gì vë viêt nam nó nói vây a, thì tai hôm dó chi có mot minh em viêt nam à,
thì tai no m ài bên HOUSING di mà cái tui TENANT UNION nó mài, em
nghï khi nó nói câu dó nó nhìn em em nghï biët me gì vë lich sir viêt nam
tai vi cái thàng tây ban nha nó dúng lên nó nói sa vë lich su' cài FORUM
bài vây em nghï sau lúe mà già BREAK em ra em nói nó em nói cài
FORUM thì chi có tir 9 già sàng dën 2 già chiëu thôi mà nói chuyên nó vë
lich sir ngirài ta tài dây dâu phài ngirài ta nghe lich su' dâu cài chuyên là
bày già nëu anh chiù làm à dây là goi là TENANT WORKER nëu mà anh
chi càm thây là van dë mà nhìrng ngirài anh chi REPRESENT anh chi
làm có cài gì tra ngai.
Ong di hop nhtr vây thw&ng không?
Tui TENANT UNION à FOOTSCRAY nó dirng ra té chirc phài tra tiën

cho nó môi ngirài di dóng 5 dông bên dó HOUSING nó tra em 10 dông
ngirài nó tai vi nó là VIETNAMESE WORKER thì vë nó GIVE SPEECH
dó em nghï trong bung nó là nó CONSULT vài ai mà nó dën nó nói nhìrng
câu chuyên dó tai vi nëu mà khi mà dirng lên nó nói nó chi có nói phirang
diên à FOOTSCRAY chàng han nhìrng cài chuyên này dùng chir nëu nó
nói chung ngirài Viêt nam có nhìrng cài tra ngai này thì không dúng/ tai
vi nó không có CONSULT dúng nguyên tác nó chi có lây kinh nghiêm cá
nhân cúa nó nó dira ra thôi nhir vây không dirgc tai vi nó à
FOOTSCRAY thì nó có thè nói là giúp dirge vài khà nàng nó cho nhìrng
ngirài cir dân à FOOTSCRAY con nhìrng khác thì sao mà em dé y em
thây khu RICHMOND này không có ngirài di này nha không có dira nào
di hët không cô chuyên mà dàm thây viêt nam nó no tir dông nó
VOLUNTEER di thôi dó nó càm thông cái chuyên này có lgi nó di, dông
149
EX T RA C TE D SA MPLE INT ERVIEWS
lám tai vi có mòt dira mà cr dai hoc LA TROBE nó di nó dang làm

RESEARCH ve ETHNIC ve COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ve triràng
FIT nó cüng di roi da so cüng khoàng 20 chuc mang 30 chuc mang ó*
trong HOUSING di mà khòng có mang nào viet nam, em hói nó nói xong
thì là QUESTION TIME em hói em nói bay già vi tri cùa chi bay già a
FUNDED BY FOOTSCRAY TENANT UNION thi du nhírng cài vùng
khác có nhírng cái CONCERN nhir vay chi tháy sao nó nói cài chuyen dó
bay già xin quy này quy no ben cùa HOUSING là dè MAKE SURE
nhírng cài vùng có cir dan dòng viet nam thi có dirac WORKER nói tièng
Viet.
3 Natural conversation between a man bom in 1933 who emigrated in
1975, and a university student in her mid-twenties. She emigrated in 1977
and is married to an Australian. M stands for the man, W stands for the
woman.
M: Nghe nói sáp di cho'i con may cái tà báo day khòng làm à?
W: À bay già thì HANG ON HE ACTUALLY SOMEHOW H HIS BOSS
IS TO PUT OUT SOME MONEY FOR HIM VERY CLEVER.
M: YOU’VE GOT DISTINCTION FOR TRANSLATION tòi khòng biét
tai lám sao tòi lai cho co dau bài ày tièng Viet cùa co khòng den nói thành
thir tòi cho bày mot cài bài kia co dich lào thành thir co nhieu làm thè thì
BALANCE OUT thành thir co dirge DISTINCTION.
W: Trài v i thay SO SO GENEROUS hói dó.
M: Ta dang binh thành thir ta sira it.
W: I SPOKE TO chú x a AND HE SAID tháy nam sáu tháng níra m ài
TOTALLY RECOVER SO I THINK EVERYBODY TERRIFIED.
M: May ngirài may ngirài bác si ày déu bào là ba tháng dén sáu tháng.
W: WHAT’S MY NAME?
M: Cài gì?
W: WHAT’S MY NAME?
M: WHAT’S MY NAME lá cái gì?
W: Trài oi tháy có nhà tèn khòng.
M: Khóng khòng cài hòm cài hòm mà binh nang a nó bào là mi con nhà ra
ngày sinh cùa mi khòng, mà mình chi nhà dirge JULY chà mình khòng
nhà dirac ngày, la thè thè khi hòi xong mình trà lài VERY QUICK may
150
EXT RA C TE D SAMPLE INT ERVIEW S
câi hôm may câi hôm minh nam o' trong doc bao a doc chi dô mot doan
mât no mô* chû* cvr nhây nha nhây.
W: Tai lüc do thay chira an.
M: Không an dirge 2 tuân hem 2 tuân 6* trong không an dirge.
W: Nhimg bây giô' thây an dirge.
M: Bây gio* thi an dirge qua mà buôn cirai no không an dirge no không
ia.
W: Thây không bi gi thây.
M: Không dirge câi gi cà kinh the thi cô di bao gio* cô di. A ha nôi là tinh
là tinh vây thôi nëu minh dé cho ho OFFICIALLY MAKE A
CONNECTION WITH ho thi VERY HAPPY.
W: WOW HE WAS COMMISSIONED BY UNESCO.
M: Làm câi chuyen Hà Nôi OK.
W: SO ARE YOU PROUD OF ME?
M: (T roi sao nira.
W: GO ON.
M: Cô dâu cô làm gi tôi dâu toi dâu cô dé câi gi toi dâu.
W: Không nhirng mà thi WELL HM I THOUGHT SERIOUSLY ABOUT
WHAT thày nôi LAST TIME WE SPOKE ABOUT hoc thêm HISTORY a
ANYWAY I KNOW THIS PERSON WHO KNOWS THIS PERSON
AND I SPOKE TO THIS LADY thi OBVIOUSLY ho CALLED FOR
HERITAGE PRESERVATION thi I SORT OF SAID I NEED TO SORT
OF MY WORK nëu mà.
M: Câi do tôt à.
W: YEAH.
M: Câi dô thi tôt à nhirng mà thàng x thi.
W: OH NO nhirng mà I.
M: HE IS IGNOMINIOUS thë mà thë mà nô là mot câi.
W: Nhirng mà câi bà câi bà dô là là câi SHE’S AN ARCHITECT HERE à
bâ dirge FUNDED câi câi FUND BY AIDAB AND SHE’S WORKING
WITH THE JAPANESE THIS WEEK I MEAN dé PUT TOGETHER mot
câi MASTER PLAN OF HOW TO.
151
EXT RA C TE D SAMPL E INT ERVIEW S
W: SO I’M SO EXCITED nhung néu má ho cho YEAH.

M: Má cüng chi di may tuán thoi.
W: Thi I RESIGN FROM WORK thi BASICALLY neu má dé FULFIL cái
DESIRE minh thói thi minh chi lám 4 tuán thói.
M: A.
W: Nhirng má neu má IT’S REALLY EXCITED MAY BE I JUST STAY
ON FOR NOTHING ELSE TO DO.
M: Tai sao có lai có lai phái RESIGN thi ve day có sao.
W: Khóng có ve day báy gió* I AM JUST TAKING OFF COUPLE OF
YEARS TO EXPLORE MY FUTURE.
M: A COUPLE OF YEARS tuói có thi cú* COUPLE OF YEARS nhir con
tói cüng di hai nam.
W: TAKING UP TRAVELLING nhirng má tai thay cái náy VERY
EXCITING MAY BE I HANG AROUND.
M: Khóng neu má RESTORATION Há Noi thi hay ANYWAY NICE TO
SPEND A COUPLE OF YEARS THERE ve day dírng có nói toán tiéng
khó nghe chán.
W: Lúe dó thi nhiém roi nhirng má tai vi máy lán triró’c di tháy hai tháng
thi I TOLD YOU YOU SEE miró-i hai tháng ky triró'c em ve Vinh Ha
Long thi nám triró’c lá nguyén cái vúng dó chí có hai cái HOTEL thói á,
12 tháng sau em ve thi 200 thiró'c thói có 13 cái HOTEL MINI HOTEL a,
thi em nghí néu má nó PUT TOGETHER mot cái a RESERVATION á.
M: IT cái gi WHAT.
W: OH NOT
M: TELL ME thi có nói có nói SO MANY có có trái mot cái CURIOSITY
cúa có xong roi có lai báo.
W: WELL thay có YOU CAN PROBABLY IMAGINE YOU KNOW
nguyén cá lóp xón xao xón xao YOU KNOW SO STORIES AND WE
MET A FEW TIMES trong tiw n g YOU KNOW.
M: Có ngiró*i di tim có di thi.
W: Thay bíra dó nguyén PUTTING HM VOTE roi cá lóp VOTE HOURS
REALLY EVER HOURS AND I MEAN ban dau thi ai cüng sung lám ai
cüng nói YOU KNOW nghe vay nhirng má AT THE END khi má WE
152
EX T RA C TE D SA M PL E INTERVIEWS
CAST THE VOTE ANONYMOUS a thi no ALWAYS SPLIT HALF WAY

nhirng mà nhirng ngiroi mà dinh vân ho*i nhiëu hon mot ti, thi là, nhüng
nguircri dô nhüng ngircri mà dâ CAST A VOTE là dinh VERY UPSET
hon nhüng ngircri mà CAST A VOTE là vân di thi nhirng mà ai cüng co lÿ
riêng cüa ngircri ta hët YOU KNOW AND SPENT SO SO MANY
HOURS FALLING DISCUSSING PRO AND CON roi thi cüng lue duc
du chuyên het, roi chi thây SHE WAS ILL ON THE DAY SHE WAS à thi
câi lirai chi không biët sao bi dây than kinh ay sao SO thi xong bîra do chi
ghé bac sï JUST FAMILY DOCTOR CHECK IT OUT AND THEY SAID
NO YOU HAVE GO TO THE HOSPITAL STRAIGHT AWAY chi vô nhà
thir ong nhà thir ong không cho chi vë bât nàm 10 ngày SO bây gio* SHE’S
OK nhirng mà cüng không rô thày.
153
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Index
address systems 115 dependency relations 104, 105, 107, 108

agglutinative languages 139 dependent sentences 42, 43
Albanian 138 derivational morphemes 88, 96, 97, 103
anticipational triggering 14 direction of movement 91, 94
Arabic 12, 13, 18, 136, 138 discourse functions 3, 4, 6, 105
article system 59 discourse topic 45
attitudinal approach 4 doubling of pronouns 13
Dual Structure Principle 15
base-language 17, Duke Ching 116
basic free forms 88 Dutch 14, 15, 18, 61
bi-directional tones 93, 94, 104
bilingual community 27, 80, 137 embedded language 9, 14, 18
bilingualism 1, 5, 7, 78, 105, 135, 137, Equivalence Constraint 12, 15, 53, 55,
138, 140 64, 65, 136
borrowing 8, 9, 10 exploratory code-switching 132
bound morpheme 15, 88 extra-linguistic 7, 18, 19, 33, 133, 137
Cantonese 91, 101, 140 Finnish 14, 15, 139

Chinese 19, 31, 45, 55, 56, 68, 69, 83, free morpheme 15, 88
91, 95, 103, 138, 140 Free Morpheme Constraint 12, 15
Chinese community 28 French 12, 13, 41, 69, 121, 139
closed class 13, 111 French personal pronouns 121
coarticulation 95
code choices 132 general constraints 15
code-changing 10 German 14, 15, 61, 105, 114, 139
code-mixing 8, 9, 10 glottalisation 98
Colombo Plan 23, 24 Government Constraint 14, 16, 70, 136
communicative approach 4 grammatical constraints 4, 136
Confucian doctrine 115, 116, 117 grammatical morphemes 17
consequential triggering 14 grammatical relationships 44, 88
consonantal alteration 89 graphemic 9
consonantal change 89
contour tones 108 heavy stress 104
conversational behaviour 129 hierarchical relation 117, 118, 119
conversational code-switching 4, 7 high pitch 90, 93, 100, 102, 103, 104,
co-operative principle 128, 129, 130 107
173
IND EX
high tone 94, 98, 99, 101, 104, 108 name rectification 115, 116, 117, 118,
Hmong 56, 68, 69 127
name taboo 119
independent sentences 42, 43 network strength scale 27
inflected language 139 Non-Switchability Constraint 15
interference 29 Northern Vietnamese 92
intersentential code-switching 7, 50 Norwegian 139
intonation languages 89
intrasentential code-switching 7, 10, 11, perception of tone 103
12, 17, 18 person reference 5, 111, 112, 114, 115,
Italian 19, 114 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123,
124, 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134,
Japanese 15 137
junior kin 119 phonological 6, 8, 9, 89, 92, 93, 102,
103, 104, 108
Kay Elemetrics Sona-Graph 140 pitch contours 89
Khmer 55, 56, 138 pitch height 94, 100, 101, 104, 108
kinship terms 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, pitch level 90, 93, 94, 97
119, 121, 122, 126 pitch movement 93, 94, 100, 101
Korean 60 pitch range 100
pitch variations 89
language contact 2, 5, 9, 137, 138, polysyllabic language 88
140 Prahran 26
language pairs 11, 15, 16, 17, 105, 137, principle of government 16
138, 140 psycholinguistic 5, 14, 53, 138
lexical tones 100, 102 Punjabi 15
linguistic assimilation 140
linguistic behaviour 2, 19, 20, 28, 32, recipient language 8
33, 85 reduplication 89
low tone 94, 98, 99, 101 rhetorical functions 18, 20
rights-and-obligation 20, 133
Malay 60 role relations 126, 130, 132
Maltese 138
Mandarin 45, 95, 101, 140 single free morpheme 88
Maori 15 situational switching 7
Marathi 17 social circles 27, 29
Markedness Model 20, 112, 125, 126, social motivation 19, 82, 128, 133, 134
128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137 social networks 18, 19, 23, 26, 27, 28,
matrix language 9, 13, 14, 17, 18 29, 32, 41, 82, 137
Matrix Language Frame Model 9, 13, social relationship 114, 124, 130, 132,
14, 17 133
mid-level pitch 93, 94, 104, 109 social values 4
monolingualism 8, 51, 135 sociolinguistic 5, 7, 14, 19, 41, 75, 80,
Moroccan 18 82, 105, 111, 112, 123, 131, 134, 137
morphological processes 8, 9, 59, 62, sociolinguistic situation 139
88 socio-psychological motivations 20
multilingualism 1, 140 solidarity relations 118
multiplexity 18 sound dimensions 102
174
INDEX
Southeast Asian languages 56, 63, 67, Tongan 138

68 topicalisation 45
Southern Vietnamese 92 topic-comment language 44
Spanish 15, 16, 45, 60, 64, 105 topic-prominent language 44, 45
speech interaction 112, 117, 133 transactional code-switching 7
structural approach 3, transference 7
structural constraints 18, 20, 111 triggering 7, 14, 54
structural integrity 15 Turkish 15, 138
Subcategorisation Principle 15 Tzu-lu 116
subject-verb agreement 13
surface structure 13, 15 universal constraints 3, 10, 12, 140
Swedish 6, 139 unmarked choice 85, 125
switch point 87, 98, 99, 102
syntactic constraints 3, 6, 56 Vietnamese conversational style 51
syntactic environment 16 Vietnamese kinship 117
Vietnamese syllable 88, 97
Tamil 138 Vietnamese tones 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93,
Thai 55, 56, 68, 69, 100, 101, 140 94, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103,
theoretical constraints 11 104, 105, 108, 109
Tok Pisin 78 vocalics 88
tonal alternation 96, 97
tonal coarticulation 95 word classes 17, 41, 45, 46, 48, 49, 53,
tonal environments 95, 140 55, 56, 59, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 80, 81,
tonal facilitation 87, 102 82, 85, 136
tonal languages 89, 90, 91, 95, 100, word combinations 87, 96
101, 102, 137,139, 140 word level 88
tone levels 90, 91 word order 15, 44, 53, 54, 56, 59, 61,
tone names 92 62, 64, 69, 85, 136
tone relationships 87, 89, 95, 96, 97, 103
tone sandhi 95, 96 Yoruba 68, 69, 100, 101, 140
175

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VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH

Asia is the world’s largest continent, comprising an enormous wealth of

FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE(S), FORM AND INTERPRETATION

© 2003 Ho-Dac Tuc

Appendix 1: Sample questionnaire 141

2.1 Distribution of Vietnam-born population in Australia 25

2.1 Age and sex distribution of the informants 37

ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics

language, the Vietnamese language is by no means free of English

Nowadays, if we walk into a Vietnamese home, we might see the parents

1.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

1.3. STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

relation of social networks and topics to patterns of code-switching.

1.4 LITERATURE REVIEW

1.4.1 Approaches to code-switching

ideas on aspects of code-switching and is a significant contribution to the

linguistic phenomena: code-switching and borrowing; or used different

graphemic integration, and ‘degree of integration’ including stability of

In addition to the criteria for a distinction between various effects of

connected with the delineation of the concept of code-switching is the

1.4.2 Specific-language constraints on code-switching

specific constraints. In fact, apart from Haugen, it is Hasselmo (1961) who

1.4.3 Universal constraints on code-switching

and Davies’s (1983) and Eid’s (1992) study. A subject pronoun in LI

matrix language (vs. embedded language) is determined on the basis of the

Among researchers who have sought to establish universal constraints

- between Obj and V:

- between V and Adv:

switching utterances in a principled, general way (Myers-Scotton 1992a,

1.4.4 Extra-linguistic factors related to code-switching

Milroy finds that the social network in which an individual is involved is

(1993a) proposes a theoretical model called ‘Markedness Model’. In very

languages (Clyne 1987a). In commenting on the underlying assumptions

Subjects and methodology

2.2 GENERAL BACKGROUND OF VIETNAMESE

Figure 2.1 Distribution of Vietnam-born population in Australia

Figure 2.1 shows Vietnamese arrival trends to Australia and their

2.2.1 The Vietnamese community in Melbourne

2.3 SOCIAL NETWORKS

community under investigation. Therefore, in examining the networks of a

2.3.1 Social networks of the Vietnamese in Melbourne

concerning patterns of code-switching in the following chapter. The idea

Thus, members of informal support mechanisms did not only interact

2.4.1 Data collection

The reason for adopting the methods of data collection involving

2.4.1.1 Questionnaire and interview

• Current issues in the community.

2.4.1.2 Recording o f natural speech

natural speech was propagated by Labov and followed by other

2.5 SAMPLE AREAS

Figure 2.2 Local government areas - Melbourne

Taking into account these factors, it becomes clear that Footscray is an

establishment of public housing accommodation in 1964 and its further

2.5.1 Analysis of the informants

2.5.2 Age and sex of the informants

Table 2.1 Age and sex distribution of the informants

2.5.3 Home language

Table 2.2 Percentage of Vietnamese by age in 1986 and 1991 in Victoria,

Table 2.3 Language spoken at home by age in Victoria

Language/Age group Number Percentage

Table 2.4 Arrival year in Australia of sixty informants

Year arriving Number o f Year arriving Number o f

of the total Vietnam-born persons in Victoria. Table 2.3 shows the

the informants to have different code-switching patterns, or code