LANGUAGE CONTACT MIXED HINDI ENGLISH

The book an attempt to study the language use by the children of the urban educated class in the city of Delhi with perspective of mixed language – one of the outcomes of language contact. It tries to find out whether the children, like the adults, switch code or not and if yes, what the nature of switching is. On the basis of the formal and the functional analysis of the switching made by the children, the study is an attempt to find out the similarities and differences between switching made by the children and the adults. It also tries to find out whether the children under investigation are bilingual or not and to what extent they have competence in both the languages – Hindi and English. The study tries to look into the data with the perspective of code-switching approach to a mixed language. It will also try to explain from where the stimuli come for both languages. It also tries to test the hypothesis that Mixed-Hindi-English (a claimed mixed language in the contact situation of Hindi and English) is used as the third code by the children and it may be their mother tongue/first langauge. The study will also try to find out whether there is any change due to the impact of language contact on linguistic situation in the region. The book consists of eight chapters.

Chapter 1 introduces the research questions and hypothesis and it provides a foundation to the study. Chapter 2 explains the concept of language contact and Bilingualism, and it reviews the seminal works done in these areas of sociolinguistics. It also discusses the major frameworks, methods and approaches available in language contact studies. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of mixed language and it deals with difference factors responsible for the emergence of mixed languages. This chapter discuss all the major factors in detail and tries to establish relationship to Mixed Hindi English. Chapter 4 talks about all the major studies in the area of mixed language. It comprises reviews of existing literature in the field of mixed language. Chapter 5 describes the methodology adopted for the present study of Mixed-Hindi-English (MHE). More specifically, it outlines the method of data sampling, tools and strategies used for collecting data, research design and the approaches used for the present study. As the main objective of the present research is to study a separate code MHE that is claimed to be existed in the contact situation of Hindi and English in India, Chapter 6 tries to text this hypothesis quantitatively. Chapter 7 approaches the same research questions qualitatively. The qualitative data has been analysed and interpreted in this chapter in detail. The last chapter of the book contains the findings of the present study.