Grammatical structures in code-switching among second generation Chinese-Australian students

This paper is based on an analysis of audio-recordings of interviews conducted at three primary schools in Victoria. The syntactic convergence or transference, which accompanies switching takes place at three levels: typological, structural and classificatory. The matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton 1993b, 1997a), revised to include the Composite Matrix Language (Bolonyai 1998), successfully deals with all forms of switching in my corpus. However, it is highly doubtful if grammatical constraints (Clyne 1987) as such exist ins witching between Chinese and English. My data rather supports the existence of facilitators or tendencies.