Using the Models: Class Agreement in Kinyarwanda-French Language Alternation

Abstract

The aim of grammatical accounts of language alternation, as we have seen, is to demonstrate how speakers achieve a sense of structural uniformity despite diversity, how they use linguistic resources available to maintain a sense of order. In Chapter 3, I have reviewed two models which have been proposed as accounts of order in talk in two languages. In concluding the discussion, I suggested that one of the weaknesses of the models, the Matrix Language Frame Model in particular, is that, drawing on the assumption that the sentence is the highest unit of grammar, these models fail to capture regularities across data sets. It was also suggested that the notion of Matrix Language might not be as useful a concept as it is said to be, since each CP must be examined indifferently in order to determine exactly what its Matrix is. In this chapter, drawing on my corpus of Kinyarwanda-French bilingual conversations, I propose a case study through which I indicate how these issues might begin to be addressed.