Oldal 68 [68]
OCR
CHAPTER 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The interaction of constraints: Two community specific instantiations of the universal bilingual grammar (Kashmiri-Hindi-English and Hungarian-English) Optimal bilingual grammar: Kashmiri—Hindi-English code-switching As has been pointed out earlier, the universal constraints stated as principles might be in conflict, and through their interaction, the actual surface realizations emerge. In Bhatt and Bolonyai’s model, the number of the inputs, the competing candidates, has been reduced to the number of codes involved in the act of switching: the monolingual and the code-switched candidate(s). It must be noted that the two candidates differ only in their formal representations and have nondistinct semantic representations. In accordance with the OT model, Bhatt and Bolonyai claim that the underlying representations (UR), the potential outputs, are fed into the evaluative part (EVAL) of the generative bilingual device, which selects the optimal candidate by filtering them through a set of constraints (CON). The constraints are generated by the generative device (GEN), which is universal, though the ranking of the constraints is community specific. As the main premise of the OT model in bilingual use is socio-cognitive optimality, the candidates are evaluated with regard to how optimally they fulfill the socio-pragmatic function relevant in a situation relying on linguistic resources instantiated by the act of code-switching. Optimality is a relative notion as it is the result of the interaction of the relevant constraints. The constraints are hierarchically arranged and violable. The ranking of the constraints is instantiated by a particular speech community’s rules of well-formedness. Although the constraints can be violated by the candidates, the only inviolable rule is that the highest ranking constraint determines ultimately optimality in a given situation, and the optimal candidate cannot violate the highest ranked constraint. The optimal candidate that complies with the highest ranked constraint emerges as the surface realization. OT in bilingual use combines a deductive, empirically-based approach with a theoretical one in exploring the rules of well-formedness in bilingual grammar. The principles, stated as constraints, which determine the universal rules of well-formedness, have been set up relying on relevant theoretical evidence. The particular instantiation of these principles, through their actual ranking in a bi-or multilingual speech community, is set up relying on the algorithmic representation of the surface realizations or outputs collected as empirical evidence in tableaux. There is no definite number of algorithmic representations required for the setting up of the constraints. Nevertheless, enough data must be provided to deduce the relation of the constraints to one another. Also, the more empirical data and their algorithmic representations are provided, the more well-grounded is the ranking. * 66°
