Analyzing the Role of Part-of-Speech in Code-Switching: A Corpus-Based Study (2024)

Abstract: Code-switching (CS) is a common linguistic phenomenon wherein speakers fluidly transition between languages in conversation. While the cognitive processes driving CS remain a complex domain, earlier investigations have shed light on its multifaceted triggers. This study delves into the influence of Part-of-Speech (POS) on the propensity of bilinguals to engage in CS, employing a comprehensive analysis of Spanish-English and Mandarin-English corpora. Compared with prior research, our findings not only affirm the existence of a statistically significant connection between POS and the likelihood of CS across language pairs, but notably find this relationship exhibits its maximum strength in proximity to CS instances, progressively diminishing as tokens distance themselves from these CS points.

## introduction code-switching (cs), the integration of two languages within a single utterance, is pervasive across diverse language pairs. this phenomenon presents the flexibility and adaptability of individuals in their language use and therefore serves as a testing ground for research into the cognitive mechanisms of bilingual language production. the studies emerging from this exploration have shown that cs involves multiple layers of linguistic processing and is influenced by the properties of the words, linguistic structures and socio-interactional considerations @xcite . in parallel, the practical implications of understanding cs extend to the development of natural language processing (nlp) techniques tailored to meet the needs of multilingual communities. recent research has seen attempts to integrate established linguistic theories of cs and harness machine-learning approaches for training automatic speech recognition (asr) models @xcite . however, these theories often originate from language pairs that exhibit syntactic similarities, and their practical application is often constrained by the efficacy of relevant dependency parsers @xcite . while machine-learning approaches have demonstrated success in their targeted tasks, they have the potential in benefiting from the integration of linguistic features drawn from the corpus under examination @xcite . thus, driven by the intrinsic role of word properties in bilingual language production and their potential utility in augmenting csrelated tasks, this paper explores the influence of part-of-speech (pos), designed with the aim of being suitable for comprehending the role of words in any language, on cs behaviors. the aim is to provide valuable insights into their role in facilitating cs occurrences across language pairs, including those from the same (spanish-english) and different (mandarin-english) language family. ## related work numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the triggers for cs. through the analysis of natural language corpora, it has been consistently observed that cs occurrences are more frequent when language-ambiguous words, primarily cognates foot_0 , are in close proximity @xcite @xcite . this observation aligns with the well-established notion that cognates lead to the simultaneous activation of both languages in speakers' minds, consequently influencing the use of both languages within a single utterance @xcite . however, it is essential to note that not all language pairs possess cognates, and even when they do, identifying these cognates requires linguistic expertise. since the majority of cs triggers are nouns and proper nouns @xcite , the role of pos in identifying the constraints of cs has garnered attention from researchers. similar to the experiments on cognates, @xcite demonstrate the dependency of pos and cs, serving as an inspiration for our work. in this paper, we substantiate a more robust hypothesis that such dependency remains significant when considering the distribution of both pos and cs across word positions, and its strength diminishes as the pos moves further from the points of cs. ## conclusion with a thorough analysis of two language pairs, we extend prior work by incorporating the impact of word positions and robustly confirm the statistically significant connection between pos and cs. the significance level is higher for mandarin-english, suggesting a more diverse syntactical structure leads to less flexibility in cs. by categorizing cs words and investigating neighboring pos, we observe that this relationship is strongest in close proximity to cs instances, gradually diminishing as words move farther from cs points. in order to validate the practical utility of our findings, we intend to integrate these observed features into the design of cs generation models, enabling us to compare the model outcomes with established theories in future research.