In order to provide details for the extra-linguistic variables examined in
the current study, each speaker was requested to fill in a questionnaire after
the recording took place. The questionnaire was equivalent for both the
Welsh-English and the Spanish-English participants, and included inquiries
about gender, age, language history, and language proficiency. For our com-
parative analysis of sociolinguistic variation we selected the following eight
extra-linguistic variables from the questionnaire, which we expected to have
an effect on the choice of the ML:
(1) age of acquisition of Spanish or Welsh;
(2) age of acquisition of English;
(3) language proficiency: self-report for Spanish or Welsh;^6
(4) language proficiency: self-report for English;
(5) medium of education at primary school;
(6) medium of education at secondary school;
(7) national identity (i.e. Cuban or Venezuelan etc.);
(8) languages of social network.^7
Data analysis
Once the recordings had been transcribed using CHAT, all of the bilingual
utterances were extracted either manually or with the Computerized Language
Analysis (CLAN) program (MacWhinney, 2000). The utterances were then
divided so that the resulting units of analysis were bilingual simple clauses.
Simple clauses constitute one unit of analysis, but complex clauses were divided
into their constituent ‘clausal units’. For example, in the sentence below, which
is a complex clause consisting of CP(B) within CP(A), we analysed CP(A)(‘cause
o’n i tua pedair) as one unit – without taking account of the embedded CP(B) –
and CP(B) (pan ges i fo) as a second, discrete, unit of analysis.
(4) [CPA(be)cause o(eddw)n i (y)n tua # pedair
because.CONJ be.V.1S.IMPERF I.PRON.1S PRT towards.PREP four.NUM.F
[CPBpan ges i fo]].
when.CONJ get.V.1S.PAST+SM I.PRON.1S he.PRON.M.3S
‘Because I was about four when I got it.’ (Fusser 27)
The data were then analysed according to the MLF framework, in order
to identify each clause as having either a Welsh, English or Spanish matrix
language. An example from the Welsh-English data is given in (5) below:
(5) mae Americans yn mwy ## commercial
be.V.3S.PRES PRT more.ADJ.COMP
‘Americans are more commercial.’ [Fusser 27]
Factors Influencing Code-Switching 125