The Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics is pleased to invite you to an upcoming colloquium: Code-switching in Text and Speech Challenges Information-Theoretic Speaker Design

In this work, we use language modeling to investigate the factors that influence insertional code-switching. Code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between one language variety (the primary language) and another (the secondary language), and is widely observed in multilingual contexts. Recent work has shown that code-switching is often correlated with areas of low predictability in the primary language, but it is unclear whether low primary language predictability only makes the secondary language relatively easier to produce at code-switching points – that is, purely speaker-driven code-switching – or whether code-switching is additionally used by speakers for other purposes, for instance to signal the need for greater attention on the part of listeners. In this paper, we use bilingual Mandarin-English online forum posts and transcripts of spontaneous Mandarin-English speech to replicate prior findings that low primary language (Mandarin) predictability is correlated with insertional switches to the secondary language (English). We then demonstrate that the predictability of the English productions is even lower than that of meaning-equivalent Mandarin alternatives, and these are therefore not easier to produce, rejecting the purely speaker-driven theory of code-switching in both writing and speech.

Debasmita Bhattacharya is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Columbia University. In this talk, she will explore how language predictability shapes code-switching in bilingual communication, drawing on Mandarin–English data from online forums and spontaneous speech. Her research examines how bilingual language use challenges existing information-theoretic accounts of language production and what these patterns reveal about the cognitive and communicative mechanisms underlying
code-switching.