Investigating Fulfulde-French Code-Switching among Fulani University Students in Bamako

Abstract

Code-switching is a language contact phenomenon claimed to be the most prevalent and commonest mode of interaction among bilingual speakers. Mali is a country composed of different ethnic groups and each group speak their own language (multilingualism). French, the official language and main language of education, is the leaners’ second language. This paper deals with Fulfulde-French code-switching. Research in the area is quasi-non-existent. Related studies are I. Abdoulaye (2013, 2016) on Songhay-French code-switching, M. Minkailou and I. Abdoulaye (2016) on Bamanankan-French code-switching, and I. Abdoulaye and M. Minkailou (2017) on the Phonological Processes at work in Songhay-French code switching. The present study aims at identifying the students’ types of switches and determining the morphosyntactic constraints that explain this language practice. The target population is university students whose first language is Fulfulde and their second language is French. The data were collected through the use of participant observation. The study has identified three types of code-switching: the inter-sentential switching, the intra-sentential switching, and the tag switching. In the intra-sentential switching, the embedded words are not transformed but they only take Fulfulde inflectional affixes to fit the grammaticality of the base code. The study has also revealed the frequent use of the past participle forms of the French verbs in the intra-sentential switching as found in I. Abdoulaye (2013, 2016) on Songhay-French code-switching and M. Minkailou and I. Abdoulaye (2016) on BamanakanFrench code-switching.