Language alternation and the state-event contrast: a case-study of Dutch-Turkish and Dutch-Moroccan Arabic heritage speakers

This paper investigates cognitive mechanisms underlying the alternating language choice in two fused (Dutch-Turkish and Dutch-Moroccan Arabic) lects. These lects are spoken by second generation heritage speakers in peergroup interactions (Nortier 1990; Backus 1996; Boumans 1998; Eversteijn 2012). It is argued that in these interactions the “alternations” between Turkish or Moroccan Arabic argument structures and Dutch argument structures occur on such a regular and intensive basis, that they cannot be exclusively attributed to extralinguistic contextual factors. Rather, the formal variation found in the data is hypothesized to reflect a distinction on the conceptual level: the speakers’ choice between a Dutch or a Turkish/Moroccan Arabic argument structure is determined by a basic conceptual contrast between scenes that denote general states on the one hand, and scenes that represent events or temporally bounded states on the other. In this way, the paper shows how multilingual data can offer further empirical support for the pervasiveness of this contrast in languages around the world.