The expression of evidentiality in French-English bilingual discourse, Language in Society, 1999, 23, 3. 355-365.

Ruth King & Terry Nadasdi

ABSTRACT. This study, drawing on data from a large sociolinguistic interview corpus for three Atlantic Canada Acadian communities, concerns codeswitches involving verbs of opinion or belief (e.g. guess, think, imagine, believe) in French-English bilingual discourse. We find that the codeswitch itself serves to underscore the speaker's stance as to the truth of the proposition and, in some cases, to indicate a degree of uncertainty not nuanced by corresponding French-language forms. Variation in usage is related to intensity of language contact at the level of the community and at the level of the individual.