A syntactic approach to gender assignment in Spanish–English bilingual speech

In this paper I argue for a syntactic analysis to gender assignment in codeswitched speech. To sustain claim, examine Spanish Det(erminer)–English noun switches (i.e., el bishop ‘the.m’) 76 sociolinguistic interviews of approximately one hour each from bilingual community Southern Arizona, U.S. (The CESA Corpus, Carvalho 2012). Based on the findings dataset, demonstrate that distribution speech poses serious challenge current models architecture rooted distinct-lexicons perspective (MacSwan 2000 et seq.). Rather, show biological (interpretable gender) plays crucial role mechanism and representation features architecture. Taking as case study, outline single-lexicon approach grammar compatible with Late Insertion view morphosyntactic model (Halle & Marantz 1993). particular, highlight relevance theme position at morphological module guide speaker insertion phonological matrices (language exponents) when codeswitching.