Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written...Show moreCode switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written conversations. Different multilinguals will have different switching patterns. These patterns can vary depending on the speaker’s language proficiency, community norms, the typology of their languages, and the cultural or political relations these languages might have with one another, among many other reasons. Code switching between Spanish and English and Spanish and French has been the subject of various studies. Although trilingual research is rare (e.g. Parafita Couto et al., 2023; Valdés Kroff et al., 2023), there has also been some research on the connection between Spanish, French and English, but most of this work is based in the French-speaking provinces of Canada (e.g. COLEM, 2023; Pato, 2019, 2022). This paper aims to study the code-switching patterns among a set of trilingual siblings living in Geneva who have Colombian heritage and attend a British school in the city. The participants recorded themselves for up to 30 minutes having casual conversations following a prompt in three separate occasions. The switches were identified alongside general information about the corpus, such as how many languages were present in each clause, the clauses’ matrix language, the general use of each language in the corpus, among others. This paper focuses on intraclausal switching. We followed Deuchar et al. (2007)’s methodology which categorises each intraclausal switch into insertion, alteration, or congruent lexicalisation according to the code switching pattern it most aligned with following Muysken’s typology of bilingual speech patterns (2000).Because English, Spanish and French are typologically similar, combined with the fact our participants are fluent in all three languages, and due to the culturally open context of Geneva, we expected alternation to be the dominant switch pattern in the recorded conversations. Having said this, since the participants go to a British school where their education is mainly in English, and because the Colombian community in Geneva is not as big as other bilingual communities around the world, a dominant insertional pattern was also a possibility. The corpus was composed of mainly unilingual clauses with 7.8% of the first recording being bilingual clauses, 19.6% of the second recording, and 8.95% of the third. Only three clauses in the entire corpus were trilingual out of 1215. Once we had analysed the entirety of the conversations, the dominant pattern was indeed overwhelmingly insertion with 77.55% of the switches in the corpus presenting this pattern. Congruent lexicalisation was present in 11.56% of the switches and alternation in the other 10.88%. Although these results do not necessarily align with our expectations of codeswitching in Switzerland, we believe our participants’ specific background, namely the fact that language separation is encouraged in the different spheres of their lives, could explain the prevalence of insertion over alternation in our case study. We hope our research will contribute to bigger corpus studies of trilingual codeswitching patterns in different communities.Show less
This study aims to examine the extent and limits of the comparison between Holland and China in French travel Literature of the 19th century. We particularly intend to comprehend the nature of the...Show moreThis study aims to examine the extent and limits of the comparison between Holland and China in French travel Literature of the 19th century. We particularly intend to comprehend the nature of the precise comparison: of which elements it consists, why she is made and in which manner. In order to answer this question, we analyse a corpus of multiple travel journals from different writers. We apply a method of Imagology, together with concepts as Orientalism and exoticism. From the analysis of the corpus results three research tracks: the material aspect of the comparison, the cultural aspect and the limits of Chinese Holland. The comparison between Holland and China has proved to be a complex structure, resulting from a long tradition as well as (erroneous) stereotypes based on different types of images.Show less
This thesis investigates the usage of the well-used but little researched descriptio puellae, a form of describing women that was used in medieval literature around Europe. The form is regularly...Show moreThis thesis investigates the usage of the well-used but little researched descriptio puellae, a form of describing women that was used in medieval literature around Europe. The form is regularly assumed to be written from top to bottom; starting with the woman's hair and ending with her hips, hands, or sometimes, feet. This thesis looks at how accurate this assumption is and also explores derivative forms of the descriptio puellae, such as the description of male characters (descriptio pueri) and the descriptions of feminine "subversive" characters that do not directly satisfy the feminine standards associated with the medieval status quo.Show less
Des châteaux aux tours, des jardins aux forêts ; Marie de France utilise divers espaces civils et naturels qui soutiennent les intrigues dans ses Lais. À ce qu'il paraît, L'objectif de la présente...Show moreDes châteaux aux tours, des jardins aux forêts ; Marie de France utilise divers espaces civils et naturels qui soutiennent les intrigues dans ses Lais. À ce qu'il paraît, L'objectif de la présente étude serait de lier les études médiévales et le concept de l'espace genré à travers les Lais de Marie de France, afin de montrer que la division de l'espace est intrinsiquement genrée et suit les tendances de la société féodale et patriarcale.Show less
Des études antérieures sur l'acquisition du genre grammatical néerlandais ont montré que les enfants L1 néerlandophones font peu de fautes de genre pour les mots avec le genre commun (de) et en...Show moreDes études antérieures sur l'acquisition du genre grammatical néerlandais ont montré que les enfants L1 néerlandophones font peu de fautes de genre pour les mots avec le genre commun (de) et en font beaucoup d’erreurs pour le genre neutre (het) (Van der Velde, 2004). Van der Velde indique que les enfants francophones L1, en revanche, font très peu d’erreurs de genre dans leur propre langue avec les articles le et la. Les enfants bilingues néerlandais/ français sont semblables aux enfants monolingues, mais l’emploi du genre est acquis plus tard ou pas du tout (Dewaele et Véronique, 2001). Pour les apprenants d’une deuxième langue, cependant, c’est une histoire différente. Selon Dewaele et Véronique (2001) les apprenants néerlandophones du français (L2) surgénéralisent le masculin le. Dans ce mémoire, nous allons tester des apprenants francophones du néerlandais L2, pour voir s’ils ont également des problèmes avec le genre neutre. Nous examinerons également si l’emploi du diminutif, qui implique le genre neutre, facilite l’emploi correct de l’article het.Show less
Nous avons analysé l'utilisation de la liaison dans notre corpus qui contient des données du corpus d'Orléans. Nous avons comparé son utilisation en analysant des données venant de deux époques...Show moreNous avons analysé l'utilisation de la liaison dans notre corpus qui contient des données du corpus d'Orléans. Nous avons comparé son utilisation en analysant des données venant de deux époques différentes. La liaison a été faite dans la grande majorité des cas dans les deux époques mais il est probable qu'il y a une différence entre les deux époques. De plus, nous avons analysé des segments de certains locuteurs.Show less
