Oldal 46 [46]
OCR
CHAPTER 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK community. OT for bilingual grammar presupposes that there is a community grammar of bilingual speakers that is understood and shared by the members of the community. OT is based on the empirical observation of emerging patterns of codeswitched outputs represented in an algorithmic system. The code-switched outputs emerge through the interaction of universal but community specific hierarchical set of constraints. The language-pair specific ranking of constraints is based on the algorithmic computation of empirically collected output realizations. The wider range of data provides a more solid ground for setting up the ranking, though it does not require a certain number of empirical data and a given number of algorithmic computations. However, ample data have to be provided and represented in algorithmic tableaux to set up the ranking of each candidate in relation to one another. The constraints are arranged in a strict dominance order. The inputs (candidates) are competing with each other to become the optimal candidate, the surface realization. The inputs (candidates) undergo a universal set of constraints and the optimal candidate will be the one, most harmonic with the constraints, violating the least ranked constraint and complying with the highest ranked in a particular linguistic situation. The constraints are soft, which means that they are violable. The only inviolable rule is that no candidate violating the highest constraint in a given linguistic situation can be the optimal one. It is always the actual community-specific ranking of constraints which determines which candidate is the optimal in a particular linguistic situation complying with the rules of well-formedness in the examined community. The interaction of the violable constraints in a particular situation is activated by the underlying socio-pragmatic function or meaning that the competing candidates are meant to fulfill and index. The optimal candidate, out of the monolingual and code-switched one(s), will be the one fulfilling the particular socio-pragmatic function or indexing a socio-pragmatic meaning the most optimally. Although in OT the number of candidates is infinite, in the OT framework for bilingual use, it is reduced to only the number of codes that can potentially be involved in the act of switching. The candidate, either the monolingual or the code-switched one(s), that violates the lowest ranked socio-cognitive constraint(s) and complies with the highest one, activated in that particular linguistic situation, will be the optimal one. As the framework focuses on the meaning-making mechanism of codeswitching, it discusses only those instances of code-switches which index or construct a socio-pragmatically meaningful function. All other + A4 +
