Au Siu Lun , Helena Gao Hong 

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Abstract

Code-mixing in speech is a habit of most Chinese-English bilingual Singaporeans. While many researchers suggest that this is a result of speakers having insufficient vocabularies, the trend of research on Singaporeans' code-mixing is mainly toward its types and patterns, and speakers' motivations. In this study, we take a lexical approach to analyse code-mixing using touch verbs as an example. We assume that words belonging to a same class of lexicon, such as touch verbs, share similar semantic components no matter whether they are English words or Chinese words. To start our investigation, we first collected the definitions of the touch verbs (触碰、碰、动、戳、拍、抚摸、触摸、摸、touch, poke, prod, jab, clap, pat, tap, slam, caress, stroke, pet) from English and Chinese dictionaries and used Gao's (2001) model of semantic decomposition to identify the semantic components and semantic similarities of the verbs. Then, we collected different touch verb uses from Chinese and English corpora that best represent the semantic features of the verbs to design a questionnaire that includes a series of Chinese and English sentences with typical code-mixing involving touch verbs. A group of bilingual Singaporean students were invited to fill up the questionnaire. Their choices of the touch verbs in the Chinese and English sentences were scored according to the appropriateness in the contexts. The participants were then assessed on their ability to use an appropriate touch verb to describe an action in a given scenario. Their habitual usage of the touch verbs in a context of code-mixing was also analysed. The scores given to the participants' choices reflected their sensitivity to the semantic differences of the touch verbs in Chinese and English. A correlation value between the scores was then calculated. The results show that: 1) The participants were more sensitive to the semantic components of a touch verb in a Chinese-only or an English-only context. However, when an appropriate touch verb for both Chinese and English contexts was required, the participants were less sensitive to the semantic components in their selection. 2) The participants were able to identify proper ways to express touch actions with touch verbs, but they rated the expressions mixed with Chinese or English words as being more natural than the expressions in pure English or Chinese without code-mixing. 3) The participants failed to identify the semantic components that differentiate the Chinese and English touch verbs. These findings show that the Singaporean bilingual speakers' habitual code-mixing has not only shaped their preference of lexical choices but also their understanding of the semantic differences between the English and Chinese touch verbs in different contexts in particular.

Keyword(s) :   Bilingual speakers, code mixing, lexical semantics, semantic features, touch verbs