Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language

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Shona-English code-mixing in the speech of

students at the University of Zimbabwe

Pedzisai Mashiri

To cite this article: Pedzisai Mashiri (2002) Shona-English code-mixing in the speech of
students at the University of Zimbabwe, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language
Studies, 20:4, 245-261, DOI: 10.2989/16073610209486314

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Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261 Copyright © 2002 NISC Pty Ltd
Printed in South Africa — All rights reserved SOUTHERNA FRICANL INGUISTICS
ANDA PPLIEDL ANGUAGES TUDIES
ISSN 1607–3614

Shona
-Englishcode-mixin ginthespeechofstu
dentsa
tthe
Un iversityofZimba
b we

Pedzisai Mashiri
Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe,
Box MP167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe
e-mail: Pedzisai@compcentre.uz.ac.zw

A b stra ct:Code-mixing (hereafter CM) is a worldwide communicative phenomenon that obtains in

language contact situations and is well documented especially in the context of third-world societies.
However, little or no systematic attention has been paid to Shona-English CM. Shona-English CM
can be found in a number of domains in Zimbabwean society, mostly in the urban areas, and often
the younger generation constitutes the most active mixers in informal interactions.
This article is concerned with the code-mixing behaviour of Shona-English bilingual students at
the University of Zimbabwe.1 These students have Shona as their mother-tongue (L1) and English
as their second language (L2). I will explore how Shona morphosyntactic structure constrains and
integrates English lexical items and phrases to form Shona-English mixed constructions. Two major
observations are made. First, it is shown that for a Shona-English code-mixed structure to be
acceptable the morphosyntactic structure of English must conform to the morphosyntactic structure
rules of Shona. Secondly, it is noted that the English the students use is also of considerable lexi-
cal and syntactic complexity and retains much of its semantic and syntactic integrity when it appears
in mixed utterances of terms. The data collected for this study reveal that CM involves the integra-
tion of English descriptive adjectives, nouns, locatives and verbs.

I ntro d u ctio n
Mixed codes are generally stigmatised and
derogatory terms since they may even be used
to describe the mix or mixers, probably as a
consequence of underlying ideologies of lin-
guistic ‘purity’ (Wardhaugh, 1986: 108; Milroy,
1987: 186; Herbert, 1997: 396). In spite of this
resistance, code-mixing occurs in many lan-
guage contact situations, consciously or uncon-
sciously, in everyday conversation.
Zimbabwe is a multilingual and multi-ethnic
country whose dynamics are reflected in the
population’s speech patterns. Observation of
daily life of the community reveals that English
is widely used in formal situations and commu-
nicative activities related to education (Smith,
1988: 143). In informal communication code-
mixing (CM) or code-switching (CS) is a wide-
spread communicative resource for Shona-
English bilinguals. However, as Chimhundu
(1997: 136) observes, most Zimbabweans con-
tinue to use their mother-tongue in their ordi-
nary lives.
The University of Zimbabwe’s (hereafter
UZ) official medium of instruction is English
(Chiwome & Thondhlana, 1992: 255). Thus,
students and lecturers generally use English as
the dominant language in academic-related
activities.2 However, when they interact infor-
mally among themselves, Shona-English bilin-
gual students use Shona as the primary and
dominant language of discourse. It is in this
context that Shona-English CM develops and
thrives as the ‘unmarked’ and preferred code
for conducting conversations.
The present article describes and explains
the linguistic characteristics of these mixed
codes. The aims of the article are two-fold. First,
it argues that English lexical and phrasal items
are integrated into Shona utterances in a partic-
ular pattern because switching appears to occur
under certain grammatical constraints and in
particular boundaries in the mix (see, for
example, Verma, 1975; Poplack, 1980;
Kamwangamalu, 1989; Myers-Scotton, 1993a,
1993b; 1994). I argue that Shona-English CM is
governed by the morphosyntactic structure
rules of Shona. This argument is made within
the framework of Myers-Scotton’s (1993a: 3)
246
“Matrix Language Framework model” (hereafter
MLF), also referred to as the Matrix Language
Principle (MLP) by Kamwangamalu (1989). The
MLF says that for a mixed code structure to be
acceptable the morphosyntactic structure of the
embedded language (hereafter EL) must con-
form to the morphosyntactic structure rules of
the matrix language (hereafter ML). The second
aim is to test the applicability of the MLF model
to Shona-English CM data. I demonstrate that
the MLF model could be regarded as a univer-
sal language constraint for CM contexts involv-
ing African languages rather than the Free mor-
pheme constraint and the Equivalence con-
straint.
The grammatical categories discussed in
this article are descriptive adjectives, nouns,
locatives and verbs. The database contains
many other categories that confirm the assump-
tions raised in this article. Nevertheless, the
present study lim its itself to these four
categories for two reasons. First, adjec-
tives, nouns, locatives and verbs seem to occur
most frequently in the speech of the University
of Zimbabwe students. Secondly, it is the
mixes involving items from these parts of
speech that tend to dom inate potential
loans into Shona.
D e finition s
Although CS is often distinguished from bor-
rowing (e.g. Pfaff, 1979; Sankoff & Poplack,
1980; Kamwangamalu, 1989; Berk-Seligson,
1986; Choi, 1991; Khati, 1992; Myers-Scotton,
1993b), it is infrequently distinguished from
CM. I shall argue that the three are different
from one another in several respects. CS and
CM are often lumped together. Berk-Seligson
(1986: 337) defines CS as “the alternate use of
two or more languages within a stretch of dis-
course, a sentence, or a constituent.” This def-
inition is supposed to include CM. Di Sciullo,
Muysken and Singh (1986: 2) cite Sankoff and
Poplack (1981) as claiming that in CM, the
structural integrity of the component languages
is preserved and the mixed codes remain
phonologically and morphologically separate.
This claim reveals an overlapping of termi-
nologies used to describe CS and CM. As the
definitions adopted for this study will show, the
characteristics Sankoff and Poplack attribute to
CM relate more to CS. However, recent studies
seem to concur on the need to explicitly show
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
the difference between CM, CS and borrowing
and have shed light on these phenomena
(Kachru, 1978; Sridhar and Sridhar, 1980;
Kamwangamalu, 1989; Herbert, 1997; to men-
tion a few). The studies have shown that struc-
turally, “in code-mixing the alternation of linguis-
tic units (e.g. morphemes, words, phrases) is
intrasentential, while in code-switching the alter-
nation is intersentential” (Kamwangamalu,
1989: 158). From a morphosyntactic point of
view, the distinction between CM and CS rele-
vant to this study is that, in CM, on the one
hand, the EL elements, which have their own
internal structure, occur in the sentences of the
ML, obeying the placement rules of the ML. On
the other hand, CS elements of both the ML and
the EL maintain the morphological and phono-
logical attributes of the respective languages.
Although there is no consensus as to the
degree of integration for an item to be consid-
ered a mix, a switch or a borrowing, I agree with
Kamwangamalu (1989: 158) that the complete
lack of integration is CS, partial integration is
CM and borrowing entails complete integration
of the linguistic unit borrowed from one lan-
guage into the grammatical system of the bor-
rowing language. In terms of the degree of inte-
gration, Herbert proposes that the three, code-
switching, code-mixing and borrowing, can best
be viewed as points on a continuum from rela-
tively large-scale to relatively small-scale.
However, the continuum concept is unreliable
in that only CM and borrowing can be clearly
linked. CS cannot be connected to the other
two since no integration is involved in it. If the
continuum notion is limited to CM and borrow-
ing, then it reveals that the integration of lan-
guage A material into the language B system
synchronically is CM, but historically, it is
regarded as borrowing. As Herbert (1997: 398)
says, “today’s mixes are tomorrow’s borrow-
ing.” Finally, borrowing may occur in the speech
of both bilinguals and monolinguals, while CM
and CS are products of a considerable level of
bilingual competence. The following examples
illustrate this distinction:
1 Code-mixing:
Une ma-tutorial-s here week ino?
(Do you have some tutorials this week?)
2 Code-switching:
Uchauya kuzondiona here? Do you have
some tutorials this week?
(Will come to see me? Do you have some
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
tutorials this week?)
3 Borrowing:
Une matutoriyari here wiki ino?
(Do you have some tutorials this week?)
On the one hand, example 1 shows sponta-
neous ‘borrowing’ of the English items tutorial
and week within a Shona sentence, and on the
other hand, 3 illustrates how the same items
have been fully incorporated into the morpholo-
gy of Shona. This clearly demonstrates the
continuum notion. However, example 2 shows
a true switch, both in grammar and lexicon,
from Shona to English.
T h es tud y
Data for this study came from informal conver-
sations of Shona-English bilingual undergradu-
ate students observed and audiotaped at the
University of Zimbabwe during the years 2000–
2001. For the four semesters, 60 conversations
of varied duration were recorded and tran-
scribed. Most informants speak Shona as their
L1 and English as their L2. Chiwome and
Thondhlana’s (1992) study on the attitudes on
the teaching of Shona through the medium of
Shona and English at the University of
Zimbabwe reveals that most students at this
institution are generally proficient in both Shona
and English. Most classes, including those on
African languages, are conducted in English
and students normally write their essays in
English. These patterns of language use sug-
gest that the subjects for this study are bilin-
guals.
The issue of what constitutes true ‘bilin-
guals’ in terms of their language proficiency has
raised much debate. Bloomfield (1933) insists
that only native-like mastery of a second lan-
guage other than one’s mother-tongue can be
considered as a true ‘bilingual’. Others like
MacNamara (1967) argue that minimal compe-
tence in at least one language skill (such as
speaking, writing, listening and reading) should
be sufficient to make one a bilingual. While the
Bloomfieldian perception of bilingualism is too
restrictive, resulting in only a few people eligible
as true bilinguals, the MacNamaran definition is
rather over-inclusive. I will adopt the view that
bilingualism is not an absolute condition (all or
nothing) but exists on a scale from minimum
competency to complete mastery of more than
one language. In view of their level of education
and the language use patterns described
247
above, the subjects studied here are at the
upper end of the scale. They do not speak
English in a ‘native-like’ manner but are pre-
sumed to be fluent in it. I therefore assume that
by being proficient in both languages the stu-
dents would produce well-formed and relatively
consistent mixes.
Observation was the most typical means of
eliciting a large corpus on CM because stu-
dents regard self-report questionnaires and
interviews as formal discourse and often switch
to English. The selection of English as the
unmarked code for interviews is attributable to
its historical/colonial status and the vernacular-
isation of the indigenous African languages in
Zimbabwe (Ngara, 1982; Chimhundu, 1993).
The bulk of the data was collected from
Swinton, a female hostel where I worked as a
warden for the period 2000–2003. I obtained
additional material from students’ social and
club meetings, dining halls and the sports field.
These informal settings where male and female
students gathered frequently and in large num-
bers were ideal for obtaining spontaneous
utterances involving CM utterances.
T h eo re tic al fram e w o rk
C o ns tra in tso nc o d e-m ix ing
The question of whether CM is random or rule-
governed has been raised in many studies on
the morphosyntactic aspects of CM. Studies
(e.g. Pfaff, 1979; Di Sciullo et al., 1986;
Kamwangamalu, 1989; Choi, 1991; Myers-
Scotton, 1993a) have shown that there exist
constraints on CM. Two categories are sug-
gested for the constraints: language-specific
constraints and language-universal constraints.
The former refers to constraints that apply
specifically to CM in a given bilingual communi-
ty and the latter holds for CM in any bilingual
situation. A detailed discussion of examples of
language-specific and language-universal con-
straints and their applicability to specific CM sit-
uations does not concern this study (see Pfaff,
1979; Sridhar & Sridhar, 1980; Berk-Seligson,
1986; Kamwangamalu, 1989). Here, I briefly
discuss two of the supposedly language-uni-
versal constraints, to legitimise my choice for
the MLF model and to demonstrate that some
constraints that are classified as universal may,
in fact, not be as universal as has been
claimed.
248
T h eF reeM o rp h em eC o n stra int
This constraint specifies that no switch is
allowed between a bound morpheme of one
language and a lexical form of another lan-
guage unless the latter has been phonological-
ly integrated into the structures of the former.
4(a) Uya/ pano/ shamwari/ yangu.
(Come here my friend.)
4(b) Ma-theory (theories).
According to the free morpheme constraint
(herein FMC), switching to English, for exam-
ple, would be permissible at the boundaries
indicated by a slant line in 4(a). However, items
such *ma-theory ‘theories’, which consist of a
Shona-bound morpheme /ma-/ ‘plural affix, cl.6’
affixed onto an English noun, ‘theory’, would
not be acceptable, “unless one of the mor-
phemes has been integrated phonologically
into the language of the other” (Poplack, 1980:
586).
Although the FMC has been known to suc-
cessfully apply to Chinese-English CM, for
example, several studies have presented data
at variance with claims for its universality (e.g.
Berk-Seligson (1986: 325) for Hebrew-Spanish
CM, Bokamba (1988: 37) for Lingala-French
CM, Khati (1992: 185) for SeSotho-English
CM). The data presented here will also cast
doubt on the language-universal nature of this
constraint because CM involving Shona-bound
morphemes and English lexemes is quite
prevalent and successful.
T h eE q u iva lenceC on s traint
This constraint states, in short, that “surface
structures common to both languages are
favoured for switches” (Pfaff, 1979: 314).
Poplack (1980: 586) characterises the con-
straint in an elaborate way:
Code-switching will tend to occur at points
in discourse where juxtaposition of L1 and
L2 elements does not violate a syntactic
rule of either language, i.e., at points
around which the surface structures of the
two languages map onto each other.
According to this simple constraint, a
switch is inhibited from occurring within a
constituent generated by a rule from one
language which is not shared by the other.
Two problems are associated with the
equivalence constraint. First, the constraint is
formulated exclusively in terms of linear
sequence, rather than in terms of structural
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
relations. As examples of Shona-English CM
involving NPs will show, when a switch involv-
ing a Shona possessive affix and an English
adjective occurs, it invariably follows Shona
syntax, but violates English rules. The equiva-
lence constraint, because of its emphasis on
linear order, would only apply where Shona and
English share grammatical categories, for
example, Shona locative affixes and English
prepositions. This observation brings us to the
second problem pertaining to this constraint,
that, for it to be applicable to CM in natural lan-
guages there needs to be categorial equiva-
lence (Di Sciullo et al., 1986: 3). The data for
this study will show that there are a consider-
able number of categories that only occur in
Shona, but not in English. Thus, the equiva-
lence constraint may not be consistently applic-
able to Shona-English CM.
M a trixla n g u ag ec o n straint
My working hypothesis in this study is that
Shona-English CM is governed by the MLF
model (Myers-Scotton, 1993a) or the MLP
(Kamwangamalu, 1989: 162) which says that
for a code-mixed structure to be acceptable the
morphosyntactic structure of the embedded
language must conform to that of the matrix
language. This article uses data from the
speech of University of Zimbabwe students as
evidence for this hypothesis. The MLF model
differentiates participating languages in CM by
identifying one as the ML and the other as the
EL. The ML is labeled as such because it plays
a predominant role in the discourse and its
grammar sets the morphosyntactic frame for
the sentences while the EL refers to the other
language that has a less important role in CM.
First, the MLF model is relevant because it
deals only with CM, the primary concern of this
paper. Secondly, the roles Shona and English
play in the code-mixed utterances discussed in
this article suit those of the ML and EL charac-
terised in the MLF model. The MLF model is a
principles and parameters approach that helps
to distinguish the roles of the two languages in
CM.
The categorisation of the participating lan-
guages as either ML or EL enables one to clas-
sify the mix into three different kinds of con-
stituents: ML islands which are constituents
consisting only ML morphemes well-formed
according to the ML grammar, EL islands —
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
constituents comprising only EL morphemes
well-formed according to the EL grammar, and
ML + EL constituents which consist of mor-
phemes from both the ML and EL. The ML mor-
phemes are labeled system morphemes and
the EL morphemes, content morphemes. This
distinction is crucial because patterns of occur-
rence of morphemes in the CM of bilinguals are
constrained by the status of the morphemes.
The primary feature for differentiating the two
types of morphemes is the feature [+/- themat-
ic-role receiver/assigner]. Content morphemes
are either thematic-role receiver or assigner,
showing a plus setting for the thematic role.
Most nouns, for example, are thematic-role
receivers, while verbs are thematic-role assign-
ers. On the contrary, system morphemes are
functional forms, hence, they lack the ability to
either receive or assign thematic role. Another
feature that distinguishes content morphemes
from system morphemes is the feature [+/-
quantification], defined by its property of speci-
fying individuals across variables. System mor-
phemes appear in the specifier position and
content morphemes on the other hand show a
minus setting for quantification. The Shona sys-
tem morphemes dominant in the data for this
study are agreement markers, plural markers,
possessive concords, tense/aspect markers,
locative markers, auxiliaries and verb exten-
sions. On the other hand, adjectives, nouns
and verbs constitute the content morphemes
from English.
The MLF is structured by four hypotheses
(Myers-Scotton, 1991; 1993a) namely: the ML
hypothesis, the Blocking hypothesis, the Island
Trigger hypothesis and the Implicational
Hierarchy hypothesis. Only the ML hypothesis
or constraint (hereafter MLC), similar to
Kamwangamalu’s (1989: 162) MLP, is relevant
to this paper. This constraint states that the ML
frames the morphosyntax of the surface struc-
ture of the ML + EL constituents, based on ML
grammar.
The MLC has several principles. The mor-
pheme order principle states that the mor-
pheme order must follow ML morpheme order;
no violation must occur. For example, a NP
order involving a Shona-English mix is as fol-
lows: Ndaka-import-a ma-orange e-red (I
imported red oranges). The NP ma-orange e-
red consists of a noun (ma-orange) and a pos-
sessive adjective (e-red). Since Shona is the
249
ML in this case, the English adjective follows its
head according to Shona syntactic rules. The
system morpheme principle claims that all sys-
tem morphemes will come from the ML. In this
example, the English verb import and the
noun orange, are inflected with Shona rather
than English inflectional morphology. The data
for this study confirm and strengthen
Kamwangamalu’s (1989: 160) hypothesis that
the MLP could be considered a general con-
straint that governs CM in African languages
and European languages.
R e s u lts
A ttr ib u tivea d jec tives
The use of English colour adjectives with an
attributive function is quite prevalent in the
Shona-English CM speech. As noted by
Mudzingwa (1995: 13), “the English colour
adjectives…modified nouns or noun phrases
(NPs) most typically in possessive noun phras-
es (PNP) combine with Shona morphemes”.
Consider the examples in 5 and 6:
5(a) Mukomana uyu anopfeka se-clown,
CL1-boy this 1SG-Present-wear-FV like
clown
This boy dresses like a clown,
5(b) hembe ye-green, tai ye-brown, jack-
et re-yellow,
CL9-shirt 9Poss-green CL9-tie 9Poss-
brown CL5-jacket 5Poss-yellow
a green shirt, brown tie, a yellow jacket,
5(c) nebhutsu dzine colour ye-black ne-
white.
and-shoes SM-has (colour) CL9Poss-
black and white
and black and white shoes.
6 Ndabirwa T-shirt ye-black ine colour
ye-white mu-collar.
Past-steal-Passive-FV T-shirt 9Poss-
black SM-has colour CL9Poss-white
Loc-collar
I had a black T-shirt with a white collar
stolen.
While in English adjectives usually precede the
noun they modify, in Shona, as in other Bantu
languages, the adjective must always follow, not
precede, the noun it modifies (Dembetembe,
1987: 3–4; Mugane, 1997: 107), as in 7 below.
The code-mixed sentences in 5 and 6 show that
in Shona-English CM the adjective must also
follow the noun it modifies. In 5(b) the posses-
sively inflected adjectives ye-green, ye-brown,
250
re-yellow follow the nouns hembe, tai and
jacket. The same pattern obtains in 5(c) and 6
where the possessively inflected adjectives ye-
black follows the noun colour and ye-black
and ye-white, follow the nouns T-shirt and
colour, respectively, in accordance to Shona
syntax as predicted by the MLC. The noun
head in the NPs colour ye-black and T-shirt
ye-black is English, but Shona syntax is still fol-
lowed. This reveals that the order of con-
stituents in Shona-English CM conforms to
Shona syntax, regardless of whether the modi-
fied noun is Shona or English. If the adjectives
were to precede the noun, as in 8 and 9, then
the resulting structure would be an unaccept-
able Shona-English CM.
7 Munhu mu-tema
CL1-person CL1-black
A black person
8 *ye-green hembe
CL9 Poss-green shirt
A green shirt
9 *re-yellow jacket
CL5 Poss-yellow jacket
A yellow jacket.
In Shona, agreement occurs within a sen-
tence or its constituents, such as in the noun
phrases munhu mutema, in 7 where the con-
cord /mu-/ in mu-nhu ‘class 1’, and repeated in
mu-tema marks the syntactic relations of the
noun and the adjective. The NPs hembe ye-
green tai ye-brown and jacket re-yellow, in 5
and 6, therefore, show the English adjectives
being inflected with Shona possessive con-
cords of the same class as the referent noun,
contrary to the Free morpheme constraint. If
the English adjectives are used without Shona
possessive concords the resultant construc-
tions are ungrammatical, as in 10 and 11:
10 *Ndinoda motokari red.
1SG Present-like-FV CL9 motor car red
I like a red motor car.
11 *James akatenga belt pink.
James 1SG Past-buy-FV CL5 belt pink
James bought a pink belt.
The possessive concords /ye-/ and /re-/
mark the noun classes 9 and 5 respectively.
Shona potential or permanently borrowed
nouns normally fall into these two classes and
their respective plurals (Fortune, 1955). The
nouns tai and motokari are already fully inte-
grated into Shona phonology while the English
nouns shirt and jacket and belt have the
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
potential to be integrated into classes 9 and 5
respectively. This confirms Khati’s (1992: 190)
observation on Sesotho-English CM that “intra-
lexical switching occurs mostly with potential
Sesotho loan nouns of class 9...” It seems ten-
able therefore, to hypothesise that borrowings
that find their way into the Shona standard
vocabulary must have first undergone the
process of CM.
Some of the data shows mixed utterances
of the structure: [Shona auxiliary verb /-ne/
‘have’ + English adjective] without a Shona
noun preceding the adjective. Consider the
examples in 12(a) and 12(b):
12(a) ...bhutsu idzi dzine black ne-white.
...these shoes (which) have black and
white colours.
12(b) ...T-shirt…ine white mu-collar
A T-shirt with a white collar.
In Shona, as in Bantu in general, an adjec-
tive always relates to some noun that can be
construed as having the quality expressed by
the adjective. Structurally, the adjective
depends on that noun for its grammatical con-
cord. This dependence is always present
whether or not the noun (or pronoun) is overtly
expressed in the NP. This claim is derived from
the Extended Standard Theory of transforma-
tional generative grammar model. The implica-
tion here is that where an NP (e.g. black ne-
white, in 12(a)) does not have a noun (or pro-
noun) head which is overtly expressed, either
phonically or graphically, the noun (or pronoun)
is deemed to have been present in the underly-
ing structure (see examples 5(c) and 6), but
was subsequently deleted by some transforma-
tional rule. This seems to be the only logical
explanation to the occurrence of the adjectives
in 12 occurring in a nominal position or as a
“pseudo NP-head” (Nkemnji, 1995: 162)
because, as Mashiri and Warinda (1999: 86)
observe, the Shona verb /-ne/ is normally fol-
lowed by nouns as heads of NP complements.
Consider the examples in 13:
13(a) Ndine bhutsu tsvuku.
1SG-have CL10-shoe ø-SM-red
I have a pair of red shoes.
13(b) Mumba umu une nzara.
CL18-house 18Dem-this SM-have Cl9
hunger
There is hunger in this home.
13(c) Ndine tsvuku. (I have red (shoes.))
The nouns bhutsu and nzara, occurring as
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
heads of the NPs bhutsu tsvuku and nzara
(with no modifier) are complements of /-ne/.
However, the noun bhutsu in 13(a) may be
omitted if it is clear to both the speaker and the
listener that the adjective tsvuku is referring to
a pair of shoes. When the head noun is deleted
the adjective tsvuku appears as the pseudo
head of the NP, as in 13(c). The occurrence of
an adjective in such a position is not common
in English. Such a form in English, ‘big has
gone’, is clearly ungrammatical. In Shona,
however, the equivalent, ‘mukuru aenda’ is
quite proper. The acceptability of this sentence
and the one in 13(c) confirms that the code-
mixed forms in 12 conform to Shona syntax, in
the same way as those in 5 and 6.
P re d ica tivea d je ctive s
The analysis of data collected for this study
shows the widespread use the Shona auxiliary
verb /-ri/ ‘to be’ with English predicative adjec-
tives. For example,
14(a) UBA3 iri selfish.
CL1a-UBA SM-be selfish
UBA is selfish.
14(b) Lecturer uyu ari very strict.
CL1a-Lecturer 1 DEM-this SM-be very
strict
This lecturer is very strict.
14(c) Mapurisa ari very cruel.
CL6 PL-Police officer SM-be very cruel
Riot police officers are very cruel.
I noted in the previous section that mixing
attributive adjectives within the NP conforms to
the MLC. However, the mixed sentences in (14)
which involve the auxiliary /-ri/ inflected by third
person subject concords /i-/ ‘class 9’ and /a-/
‘class 1’ respectively, followed by English
adjectives, break the syntactic rules of Shona,
thus violating the MLC. Interestingly, these
mixed forms are quite predominant among the
subjects of the present study and Shona bilin-
guals in general (Mudzingwa, 1995).
Comparing the examples in 14 and those in 15
will show that although the mixes are made in
Shona-based sentences, they conform to
English syntax which permits the BE verb pre-
ceded by a subject in any person to combine
with predicative adjectives:
15(a) I am very sad.
15(b) S/he is strict.
15(c) They are very cruel.
While the code-mixed forms in 14 resemble
251
those in 15 syntactically, they break the rules of
Shona syntax in that, in prototypical Shona syn-
tax /-ri/ is only followed by adjectives when it is
inflected with the first and second person sub-
ject concords, as in 16(a) and 16(b). Constru-
ctions consisting of /-ri/ inflected with the third
person subject concords, with adjectives, are
unacceptable, as those in 16(c) and 16(d):
16(a) Ndiri mupfupi.
1SG-be CL1-ADJ-short
I am short.
16(b) Uri mutete.
You-SG-be CL1-thin
You are thin.
16(c) *Ari mupfupi.
1SG-be CL1-short
S/he is short.
16(d) *Vari vatete.
2SG-be CL2- thin
They are thin.
In this section, I have shown how attributive
adjectives and predicative adjectives occurring
in Shona-English CM are governed by different
constraints. Attributive colour adjectives follow
the head nouns that they modify in NPs as pre-
dicted by the MLC, regardless of whether the
head noun is Shona or English. The adjectives
appearing in the postnominal position in the NP
are inflected with Shona possessive concords,
which agree with the prefixes of the head noun,
contrary to the FMC. Noun phrases with a
Shona head noun that is overtly or covertly
expressed, modified by an English adjective,
can succeed the auxiliary verb /-ne/ in accor-
dance with Shona syntax. However, the behav-
iour of code-mixed forms involving the Shona
verb /-ri/ and English predicative adjectives
hints that the Matrix Language constraint may
not apply universally to Shona-English CM.
Unlike attributive adjectives which conform to
Shona morphosyntactic rules in accordance
with this constraint, predicative adjectives suc-
ceeding /-ri/ stretch these rules to correspond
to the English syntax.
N o u ns
The speech corpus of UZ students shows that
their CM involves mostly nouns that take the
subject markers of classes 5 and 9 in Shona.
The examples in 17(a) and 17(b) show the
nouns of class 5 and those in 17(c) and 17(d)
those of class 9 respectively:
17(a) Ndi no da bible rangu.
252
1SG-Present-like-FV bible CL5-Poss-
mine
I like my bible.
17(c) Note book rangu riri kupi?
Note book CL5-Poss-mine SM-be
CL17-Loc-where
Where is my note book?
17(c) Tutorial yedu yapera.
Tutorial CL9-Poss-our CL9-SM-Past-
finish
Our tutorial is through.
17(d) Ndipewo address yako.
1SG-Present-give-FV-please Address
CL9-SM-Poss-yours
Please give me your address.
The plural forms of nouns that fall into class
5 are placed in class 6. In the CM utterances
these nouns are marked for plural by the Shona
morpheme /ma-/ and by the English plural
marker /-s/. Thus, the nouns receive double
plural marking, which Mudzingwa (1995: 32)
calls “repluralisation”. Khati (1992: 185)
observes a similar phenomenon in SeSotho-
English CM and Bokamba (1988: 37) in
Lingala-French CM. The following examples
show instances of double pluralised nouns in
Shona-English CM:
18(a) Ma-janitor(s) ava mashoma.
CL6-PL-janitor M-be CL6-ADJ-few
Janitors are now few.
18(b) Grace akapedza kunyora ma-assign-
ment(s) here?
Grace SM-Past-finish-FV INF-write
CL6-PL-assignment yes/no
Did Grace finish writing assignments?
(19a) Ndipewo ma-notes.
1SG-Imp-give-FV-Clitic-please CL6-PL-
note
May I see your notes please.
19(b) Tiri kuita ma-discussions.
2PL-be INF-do-FV CL6-PL-discussion
We have some discussion.
19(c) Ma-toilets agezwa here?
6PL-toilet SM-Past-wash-Passive-FV
yes/no
Have the toilets been cleaned?
As the examples in 18 and 19 show, the
Shona plural marker /ma-/ and the English
stem are obligatory components of the mix.
However, on the one hand, there are several
examples (see Appendix) that resemble those
in 18 where the English plural marker /-s/ can
be omitted without affecting the grammaticality
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
of the sentences. On the other hand, many
examples, similar to those in 19 obligatorily
require the presence of the three components;
the Shona /ma-/, the English stem and the
English plural marker /-s/. The explanation for
this phenomenal difference is both linguistic
and sociolinguistic. It is linguistic in that, first,
prototypical Shona constructions have no dou-
ble pluralisation of the nature occurring in
Shona-English CM. The form of double plural
that occurs in Shona involves pre-prefixing.
Pre-prefixing occurs when one or more prefixes
of other noun classes are inflected onto a stem
that already carries a prefix denoting the prima-
ry specimen of that class. Example 20 below
shows that the adjoined prefixes normally add
secondary semantic connotations:
20 Ma- zi- v- ana
CL6-PL CL21- CL2-PL-child
Big, ugly (handsome, healthy, etc) chil-
dren.
Secondly, the constructions that omitted the
English /-s/ are marked and those that retain it
seem to be the unmarked forms of the CM
phenomenon. Those speakers who leave out
the /-s/ consciously approximate the typical
Shona phonological and morphological patterns
of fully integrated loans. Khati (1992: 190) says,
CM occurs mostly with potential loans …
and if this is frequent enough, it may result
in the adaptation of the mixed words to one
of the languages concerned, especially the
one to which the affixes belong.
If this hypothesis is tenable, it explains why
most Shona loan nouns are in classes 5, 9 and
10. Discussions with some students revealed
that purists generally frown upon CM.
Bilinguals who feel guilty at this ‘offence’ tend to
make conscious efforts to make the CM forms
suit the phonology and morphology of fully
assimilated loans.
Nevertheless, all English nouns appearing
as mixed nouns of class 6 seem to conform to
the Shona morphosyntactic constraint that
requires them to obligatorily take the Shona
plural marker /ma-/ for class 6. The significance
of /ma-/ is derived not only from its plurality
function, but also from its control of the gram-
matical concord of an utterance that contains a
mix, as in 18(a) above. Trying to leave out /ma-/
but retaining /-s/ produces ungrammatical sen-
tences precisely for this reason, as in 21. (The
morphological analysis of 21(a) and 21(b) is the
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
same as for the examples in 18(a) and 19(a)
above):
21(a) *Janitors ava mashoma.
Janitors are now few.
21(b) *Ndipewo notes.
May I see your notes please.
While /ma-/ is compulsory to complete the
morphosyntax of the sentences above, the
English marker /-s/ seems to be optional in
some instances, as in 18. If phonologically inte-
grated into the language of the affixes as
asserted by the FMC, and also widely accepted
or standardised, mixed words which always
take /–s/ will retain it in their fully assimilated
forms. For example, if ma-note-s is assimilated
into Shona it would be pronounced as [ma-
nots] or [manotsi], but not [*manot] not [*man-
oti]. On the other hand, mixed forms which may
not include –s, as in ma-toilet, may or may not
retain the /–s/ sound in their fully assimilated
forms. For instance, ma-toilet would be pro-
nounced either as [matoiret], [matoireti] or
[matoirets].
In Shona, as in other Bantu languages, the
nasal classes 9/10 do not show a singular/plur-
al distinction. Examples 22(a) and 22(b) show
that the distinction is normally indicated by the
grammatical concord. When used in mixes
involving the class 10 grammatical concord,
English nouns appear with a /ø-/ (zero) prefix,
conforming to the Shona nouns of this class, as
examplified in, 22(c) and 22(d). Any violation of
this morphological rule by either inflecting the
English noun with the Shona prefix /ma-/ or
English /-s/ or both results in the ungrammati-
cal mixed forms in 23(a) and 23(b).
22(a) Nyuchi inoruma.
9-SG-bee SM-Present bit
A bee bites.
22(b) Nyuchi dzinoruma.
10-PL-bee SM-Present-bit.
Bees bite.
22(c) Shoelace dzangu dzadambuka.
Shoelace CL10-PL-Poss-mine SM-
Past-snap-FV
My shoelaces have snapped.
22(d) Ndinoda kuverenga e-mail dzangu.
1SG-Present-want-FV INF-read-FV e-
mail CL10-PL-Poss-mine
I want to read my e-mail messages.
23(a) *ma-shoelaces dzangu dzadambuka.
My shoelaces have snapped.
23(b) *Ndinoda kuverenga e-mails dzangu.
253
I want to read my e-mail messages.
It seems reasonable to hypothesise that the
Shona plural marker, overt or covert, and the
English stem are the obligatory components of
the mix and the English plural marker is only
permitted in class 6 where it can occur togeth-
er with /ma-/. Where Shona does not syllabical-
ly mark for plural (as in class 10), code-mixed
forms follow suit.
The arguments presented in this section
reveal that Shona-English CM involving nouns
conform to the MLC. The nouns, which I sug-
gest as potential loans of classes 5/6 and 9/10,
appear with the prefixes and agreement mark-
ers of these classes. The nouns that fall into the
singular classes 5 and 9, as illustrated in (17),
appear without syllabic prefixes, like the proto-
typical Shona nouns of the same classes. Their
classification is evidenced by the subject con-
cords that they take: /ri-/, for class 5 and /ya-/,
for class 9. The plural forms of the nouns that
fall into class 5 are placed into class 6. These
are invariably marked by the Shona plural mor-
pheme /ma-/ and sometimes, also by the
English plural marker /-s/, resulting in double
pluralisation. However, as Myers-Scotton
(1993a) observes for Swahili-English CM and
Shona-English CM, the Shona plural mor-
pheme is the more active of the two, hence, it
determines the noun’s syntactic relations with
the other sentence constituents. The nouns of
class 10 normally appear with a zero prefix and
are distinguished from their singular forms by
the /dz-/ agreement marker. The English nouns
that fall into this class in Shona-English CM fol-
low the Shona morphosyntactic constraints.
L oca tives
Locative nouns in Shona fall into classes 16, 17
and 18. In all cases the prefixes; pa- for class
16, ku- for class 17 and mu- for class 18 carry
the syntactic feature [+locative] and they are,
therefore, obligatory. Trying to use a noun with-
out a locative prefix to denote the position of an
object in space relative to the time expressed
by the verb produces an ungrammatical sen-
tence. For example,
24(a) *Ndaona mwana dhorobha.
1SG-Past-see-FV CL1-child CL5-town
I saw the child in town.
24(b) *Baba vaenda basa.
1aSG-father SM-Past-go-FV CL5-work
Father has gone to work.
254
The well-formed sentences would read:
25(a) Ndaona mwana kudhorobha.
1SG-Past-see-FV CL1-child CL17-
Loc-town
I saw the child in town.
25(b) Baba vaenda kubasa.
1aSG-father SM-Past-go-FV CL17-Loc-
work
Father has gone to work.
The same constraints apply to typical
English sentences where the omission of a
preposition results in ungrammatical forms.
Compare 26(a) and 26(b):
26(a) I met Nomalanga in town.
26(b) *I met Nomalanga town.
When UZ students use English nouns that
denote place in Shona-English CM they invari-
ably prefix Shona locative markers to these
common nouns in accordance with Shona mor-
phological requirements. For instance,
27(a) Ndiri kuenda ku-lecture.
1SG-be INF-go-FV CL17-Loc-lecture
I am going for a lecture.
27(b) Warden ari mu-office.
Warden SM-be CL18-Loc-office
The warden is in the office.
While the Shona locative prefixes may be
regarded as linguistic equivalents of English
prepositions, the former occur as bound mor-
phemes which are attached to nouns, whereas
the latter exist as free morphemes. In addition,
unlike English prepositions, Shona locative pre-
fixes occur in complementary distribution with
their allomorphs /pa-, kwa- and ma-/. The mor-
phemes, on the one hand, combine with com-
mon nouns, as illustrated in 27 and their allo-
morphs occur with nouns that refer to names of
people, titles, and sometimes names of places
that are named after people. The same con-
straints apply to English nouns of the same cat-
egories when they are used in Shona-English
CM. Compare sentences 28(a) and 28(b),
where 28(a) represents a typical Shona sen-
tence, and 28(b), the CM form:
28(a) Vasikana vaenda kwamambo.
2PL-girl SM-Past-go-FV CL17-Loc-chief
The girls have gone to the chief’s.
28(b) Vasikana vaenda kwa-dean.
2PL-girl SM-Past-go-FV CL17-Loc-dean
The girls have gone to the dean’s office.
In summary, Shona-English mixed utter-
ances form locatives by inflecting English
nouns with Shona locative prefixes. Although
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
the notion of locative prefix in Shona is equiva-
lent to prepositions in English, the latter occur
as free morphemes and the former as bound
morphemes. The mixed locatives therefore, fol-
low the Shona morphological constraint that
requires bound morphemes to be attached to
nouns. Example 27 shows that, as in Shona,
the locative morphemes /pa-, ku- and mu-/
inflect common nouns, while their allomorphs,
/pa-, kwa- and ma-/, occur with proper nouns,
functionaries and titles.
V e rb s
The database for this study reveals that the
inflection of English verb stems in the Shona-
English CM follows Shona morphosyntactic
constraints by being inflected by Shona verbal
morphemes. The Shona verb has a complex
morphology. In the broadest sense the Shona
verb comprises eight affixes which are attached
to the verb root. The following is an elaborate
analysis of the composition of the Shona verb:
29 Mood-subject-tense-aspect-object-root-
extensions-final vowel-clitic
The categories mood, root and final vowel are
obligatory, hence they are common to all con-
structions. Six of the eight verb moods in
Shona have /-a/ as a final vowel (a default ver-
bal suffix throughout Bantu) and only two have
/-e/ as final vowel.
The speech forms of the UZ students show
that the English verbs that they use in Shona-
English CM in the affirmative are inflected by
Shona morphemes for marking mood and final
vowel, as compulsory components and has a
selection of the other affixes given in the analy-
sis in 29 above. The final vowel is a mood indi-
cator in each case. For example:
30(a) Mukomana uyu ano-fantasis-a.
(Indicative mood)
1SG-boy CL1-DEM-this SM-Present-
fantasise-FV
This boy fantasises.
30(b) Ndi-hug-e Thandi here? (Subjunctive
mood)
1SG-hug-FV CL1a-Thandi yes/no
Shall I hug Thandi?
In 30(a) the code-mixed finite verb ano-fan-
tasis-a comprises the subject agreement prefix
/a-/, referring to ‘she’ or ‘he’, a high tone on this
prefix to indicate the indicative or principal
mood, the present habitual tense sign /-no-/,
the English verb root fantasis- and the Shona
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
final vowel /-a/. In 30(b) the verb hug is inflect-
ed with the Shona subject agreement prefix
/ndi-/ referring to the first person singular
(human), a high tone on this prefix marking the
subjunctive mood, and the final vowel /-e/. Note
that all the facts in 30(a) and 30(b) violate the
FMC. Despite that the English stems conform
to the conjugation of Shona verbs, they do not
break their phonological, and to some extent,
syntactic constraints. For example transitive
verbs such as hug in 30(b), and intransitive
verbs, such as fantasise in 30(a), are written
according to the phonological rules that obtain
in English.
All the English verbs appearing in the cor-
pus for this article may be inflected by any of
the Shona tenses in the Shona-English mixed
forms. It appears that the distinction of regular
and irregular verb forms that obtain in English
falls away when Shona tense signs inflect
English verbs. The verb swim in 31(a) is an
irregular verb in English while present, is regu-
lar. The examples 31(a) and 31(b) demonstrate
that when swim and present are used in the
code-mixed utterances in the past tense, they
do not take the English past tense morphemes,
which would show the regular-irregular distinc-
tion. Instead, the tense is marked by the Shona
past tense sign /–ka-/ resulting in perfectly
grammatical forms:
31(a) Nda-ka-swim-a.
1SG-Remote Past-swim-FV
I swam.
31(b) Wa-ka-present-a here?
2Sgl-Remote Past-present-FV yes/no
Did you present?
The regular-irregular distinction typical of
English verbs falls away in the CM forms
because no such difference exists in Shona,4
hence, the code-mixed utterances conform to
the morphological constraints of Shona. A quick
perusal of Hannan’s (1984) Shona-English
bilingual dictionary and Chimhundu’s (1996)
monolingual Shona dictionary will show that
fully integrated loan or borrowed verbs, for
example, -chinja ‘change’; -bhabhatidza ‘bap-
tise’; dhiraivha ‘drive’ and hwina ‘win’ are from
both regular and irregular English verbs. Note
that change and baptise are regular verbs,
while drive and win are irregular verbs.
As other Bantu languages, Shona exhibits
negation of verbs (Doke, 1947; Fortune, 1981;
Dembetembe, 1986; Mashiri et al., 2002). When
255
this happens in code-mixed speech, sentences
like 32(c) and 32(d) result. The hypothesis that
Shona tense signs are attached to both regular
and irregular English verbs also applies to
negation. Examples 32(a) and 32(b) show
grammatical forms resulting from inflecting
irregular verbs with negative affixes and 32(c)
and 32(d) also demonstrate the acceptable
forms culminating from the use of regular verbs:
32(a) Mu-sa-writ-e mubhuku iri.
2Pl-Neg-write-Fv CL18-Locative-book
Demonstrative-this
Do not write in this book.
32(b) Ha-ndi-dream-i ma-answer-s.
Neg-1SG-dream-Fv CL6-answer-Pl
I do not foretell answers.
32(c) U-sa-tempt-e vamwe.
2Sgl-Neg-tempt-Fv CL2-Enumerative-
other
Do not tempt other people.
32(d) Ha-ndi-repeat-i zvandareva.
Neg-1SG-repeat-FV CL8-Past-say-FV
I do not repeat what I have said.
The utterances musawrite in 32(a), hand-
idreami in 32(b), usatempte in 32(c) and hand-
irepeati in 32(d) represent typical negative ver-
bal structures in Shona in that they comprise of
the characteristic morphological elements that
one expects to find in constructions of this type
in standard Shona. The utterances usatempte
and musawrite consist of the subject agree-
ment prefixes /u-/ ‘You singular’ and /mu-/ ‘You
plural’, the negative affix /-sa-/, the verb roots
and the negative final vowel /-e/. Similarly,
handirepeati and handidreami comprise the
Shona prefixal negative affix /ha-/, the first per-
son singular agreement prefix /ndi-/, the
English roots repeat- and dream-, and the prin-
cipal negative final vowel /-i/. These construc-
tions conform to the typical Shona verb mor-
phology where the second person subject pre-
fixes always take the negative marker /-sa-/
and its corresponding negative final vowel /-e/
and /ha-/ and /-i/ normally mark the negative
indicative verb.
Dembetembe (1978) and Mashiri and
Warinda (1999) show that reduplication of
verbs is a common phenomenon in Shona.
One common pattern of reduplication involves
repeating the whole verb stem. For example,
33(a) -tarisa-tarisa.
-look-look
Look around repeatedly and fast.
256
33(b) -rwara-rwara.
sick-sick
Being sick frequently.
English verb stems occurring in Shona-
English CM follow the Shona morphological
constraints of reduplication. Consider the
examples below:
34(a) Tajaira ku-demonstrat-a-demonstrat-a.
2PL-Past-fond of-FV INF-demonstrat-
FV-demonstrat-FV
We are in the habit of staging demonstra-
tion just for fun.
34(b) Handidi vanhu vano-visit-a-visit-a
manheru.
Neg-1SG-like-FV CL2-people SM-
Present-visit-visit ADV-evening
I do not like people who are in the habit of
visiting me in the evening.
As is shown in 29 above, verb extensions
can inflect any Shona verb root. Some English
verb stems, both regular and irregular, used in
Shona-English CM are also suffixed by Shona
verb extensions. The extensions that occur
more frequently in the data for this study are
the passive, applied and causative extensions
(see Appendix). For example,
35(a) Roommate wangu aka-withdraw-a.
Roommate 1SG-Poss-mine SM-Past-
withdraw-Passive-FV
My roommate withdrew (from the pro-
gramme).
35(b) Nda-apply-ir-a loan.
1SG-Past-apply-Applied-FV loan
I applied for a loan.
35(c) Akabatwa achi-squat-is-a.
3Sgl-Past-catch-Passive-Fv SM-
Participal-squat-Causative-FV
She was caught staying with someone in
her room illegally.
The irregular verb withdraw is extended
with the Shona passive marker /-w-/ and the
regular verbs, apply and squat, with the
applied extension marker /-ir-/ and the
causative marker /-is-/ respectively.
Earlier, reference was made to double plu-
ralisation that involves the use of both the
Shona plural maker for class 6 /ma-/ and the
English morpheme /-s/ in noun mixes.
However, with verbs there is no evidence of
inflecting English verbs with morphemes from
both languages. It seems that trying to use verb
inflections from both languages could produce
ungrammatical sentences. For instance,
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
36(a) *Aka-apologis-ed.
3Sgl-Past-appologise
S/he apologised.
36(b) *Lecturer va-summaris-ed zvatakadzid-
za.
Lecturer 1SG-Past-summarise CL8-OM-
Past-learn-FV
The lecturer summarised what we learnt.
36(c) *Ndiri ku-moralis-ing.
1SG-be INF-moralise
I am moralising.
36(d) *Ano-enjoys local drama.
3Sgl-Present-Enjoy local drama
S/he enjoys local drama.
The redundancy and ungrammaticality
resulting from combining English and Shona
inflections suggest that Shona morphosyntactic
constraints require that English verbs used in
the mix conform to Shona inflectional morphol-
ogy. This requirement ensures well-formedness
of the English verbs used in the CM. In fact,
there is no evidence of use of any English verb
inflections in the corpus collected for this study.
The pattern of CM in this data, therefore, sug-
gests that Shona-English CM is rule governed
and the code-mixers apply these rules, even
though the process is unconscious.
Commenting on French/English — Bantu CM,
Kamwangamalu (1989: 165) notes that “…
when a French/English verb is used in a
French/English — Bantu CM it must be inflect-
ed with Bantu rather than French/English inflec-
tional morphology.” The observations on inflect-
ing EL’s verbs with the ML’s inflectional mor-
phology made in this paper are not unique to
Shona-English CM. Khati (1992) observes this
of SeSotho-English CM, Myers-Scotton
(1993a) with Shona-English and Swahili-
English, Kamwangamalu (1989) with Swahili-
English CM and Pfaff (1979) with Spanish-
English CM, as well. In the Shona-English CM
data discussed in this study, the English verbs
conform to the Shona inflectional morphology
but still function as verbs and retain their
English meanings and syntactic features.
This section illustrates that English verbs
that occur in Shona-English CM follow Shona
verb morphology. Contrary to the FMC, the
English language verbs are inflected with
Shona verbal morphemes. The morphemes
determine, among other things, the agreement
of the verb with the subject in a sentence, the
tense, aspect and mood of the verb. In Shona,
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261
the final vowel marks the mood of a verb. For
example, the final vowel /-a/ in the verbs in 31
marks the indicative mood, while the vowel /-e/,
as in the verbs in 32(a) and 32(c), denotes the
imperative mood. No similar morphological
rules exist in English, thus, the morphology of
the verbs in the code-mixed forms conform to
the Matrix Language constraint. The data in this
article also show that the distinction between
regular and irregular verbs that often exists in
English does not exist in Shona. Hence,
Shona-English CM disregards it, and follows
the morphosyntactic pattern of Shona.
C on clu s io n
This article demonstrates that the University of
Zimbabwe students who use Shona as their L1
and English as their L2 constitute a well defined
bilingual group that employs Shona-English
mixed utterances as their ‘normal’ code in infor-
mal and off-the-record conversations. In the
conversations, Shona, on the one hand, is the
base language of the discourse that supplies
inflectional morphemes and lexical items which
determine the morphosyntactic pattern of the
CM. On the other hand, English is the embed-
ded or guest language that supplies elements
which decide mainly the semantic aspect of the
mix.
This study has also reviewed the adequacy
of the syntactic explanations advanced in the
literature on CM. I have shown in the course of
the discussion that some of the syntactic con-
straints on CM that are often purported as ‘uni-
versal’ do not seem to apply to Shona-English
CM as attested by the numerous counter
examples in this article. Along the same lines,
Gibbons (1987) on Cantonese-English,
Bokamba (1988) on Lingala-English CM and
Kamwangamalu (1989) on French/English-
Bantu CM, to mention only a few, have also
questioned the universal status of such con-
straints as the free morpheme constraint. I
therefore, argue for the validity of Myers-
Scotton’s Matrix Language Framework model
as an ideal principle for governing Shona-
English CM, except in its application to pred-
icative adjectives occurring with the auxiliary
verb /-ri/. In essence, the MLF model says that
if a European language (English, in this case) is
involved with an African languages (e.g.
Shona), the former must conform to the mor-
phosyntactic structure rules of the latter, the
257
matrix language. This study provides evidence
in support of this principle. First, I have shown
that in accordance with Shona syntax, English
attributive adjectives used in Shona-English
CM are postposed rather than preposed to the
noun they modify, whether the noun is Shona or
English, and whether it is overtly of covertly
expressed as the head of an NP. Secondly, I
demonstrated that at grammatical level, rules of
inflection governing the surface forms of
English nouns and verbs used in Shona-
English CM “are typically frozen” (Bentahila &
Davis, 1983: 328) and superceded by those of
Shona. It is illustrated that nouns generally
receive double plural marking but instances
where the English plural marker is omitted, are
not uncommon. This phenomenon is consistent
with prototypical Shona morphology that lacks
double pluralisation. An explanation is offered
as to why the Shona plural marker is obligatory
and active while the English one is not. The
article also demonstrates that the distinction
between regular and irregular verbs typical of
English morphology falls away in the code-
mixed forms where Shona verbal affixes inflect
both types of verbs successfully.
The results of this study like the conclusions
made by the various researchers reviewed
here, contribute to the evidence for considering
the MLC as a language-universal model. I
even hypothesise that this model, like
Kamwangamalu’s MLP, seems to be more suit-
ed for CM involving African languages.
However, only comprehensive research involv-
ing African languages can validate this postula-
tion. Among the many questions remaining for
future research, one relates to the pragmatic
functions of the English elements that appear in
the Shona-English CM and the other is the pho-
netic realisation of the mixed forms. If shifts in
language entail shifts in pronunciation, do the
English items in the mix sound African?
Notes
1
The University of Zimbabwe, one of the oldest
in the southern African region, is largely an
English medium university. Roughly 99.9% of
the student body is black, and the vast major-
ity of these students are mother-tongue
speakers of Shona. The distinct advantage of
using data involving university students is that
one can assume that the data are from speak-
ers who have a good language competence
258
(Herbert, 1997: 397) in English and in Shona.
2
The University of Zimbabwe recognises
English as the official medium of instruction
and the language of record, except where the
programme or course being offered is a lan-
guage. However, traditionally, the
Departments of African Languages and
Literature and Curriculum and Arts Education
that teach Shona and Ndebele have used
English as the medium of instruction
(Chiwome & Thondhlana, 1992: 255) and in
these departments students normally write
essays in English though they have the
option to use Shona or Ndebele. But, most of
the teaching, discussion and contributions
by students are done either in
Shona/Ndebele or Shona/Ndebele-English
code-mixing or -switching.
3
UBA is an abbreviation of University Bachelor
Association. This is a sociopolitical tag of
group identity that is used by University of
Zimbabwe students to refer to the male stu-
dents. The tag is commonly used as a refer-
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260
A p pe n dix
A d jectiv e s
Co lou ra d jective s
1 Ndabirwa jagi remvura re-white, rine mubato
we-red, blouse re-white nema-skirt maviri e-
black.
I have had a white water jar with a red han-
dle, a white blouse and two black skirts
stolen from my room.
(Swinton Hall, 20 September 2000)
2 Tipeiwo kofi ye-black isina mukaka ne-ma-
pieces mana echingwa che-brown.
Please, may we have black coffee (without
milk) and four pieces of brown bread?
(New Complex 5 Dining Hall, 5 March 2001)
3 Ndapa ma-notes ako kumusikana anga aine
juzi rine colour ye-dark green ne-skirt ye-
jean. Ati anogara mu-V12.
I gave your notes to a girl who was wearing a
dark green jersey and a jean skirt. She said
that she stays in V12.
(Basketball field, 10 October 2000)
O th era d jec
tiv e s
1 Janitor uyu ari lazy. Akangogara pa-chair
iyoyo iyo anaobva atokotsira.
This janitor is lazy. Once he sits on that chair
of his he falls asleep immediately.
(Swinton Hall foyer, 18 October 2000)
2 Lecturer wedu ari very humble asi ari intelli-
gent. Vamwe vanobva vashamisira zvokuti
anopedza lecture yose achikuudzai nezvake
iye. Ini handifariri munhu ari proud kudaro.
Our lecturer is humble but intelligent. Others
are so arrogant that sometimes they talk
about their personal experiences for a whole
lecture time. I dislike such proud personali-
ties.
(University Green, 27 February 2001)
N o un s
D ou blep lu ral
1 Tinoda ku-zo-show-a ma-videos kuti ma-res-
idents avarairwe.
We want to show some videos as a way of
entertaining the residents.
(Swinton Hall, 27 February 2001)
2 Ma-food providers vari kuda kukwidza mari
yesadza.
The food-providers intend to raise the price of
sadza.
Mashiri: Shona-English code-mixing
(Manfred Dining Hall, 10 April 2000)
3 Ma-second years haawana residence saka
ma-squatters akawanda.
Second year students do not normally qualify
for residence, hence the increase in the num-
ber of illegal residents (squatters).
(Students’ Union building, 25 August 2000)
4 Ma-comrades ma-lecturers ari pa-strike.
Hatisi kudzidza asi mari iri kungopera
tichitenga sadza.
Comrades, there are no classes since lectur-
ers are on strike, yet we are still spending
money on food.
(Students’ Union building, 24 November
2000)
En glishp lu ra
lm arke ro mitted
1 Ma-corridor edu akachena asi ma-toilet ane
tsvina chaizvo.
Our corridors are clean but the toilets are
very dirty.
(Swinton Hall, 2 March 2001)
2 Ndine ma-test ne-Monday asi ndichine ma-
assignment maviri asara.
I have tests on Monday yet I still have two
assignments to finish.
(Campus bookshop, 6 March 2001)
3 Ma-technician, ma-secretary havasi kutsigira
ma-lecturer.
The technicians and the secretaries are not
supporting the lecturers.
(Commuter rank, 20 November 2000)
Lo c ative s
1 Ndiri kuenda ku-field-trip ye-Archaeology.
I am going for an Archeology field trip.
(Library, 28 February 2001)
2 Handei tinotenga chikafu ku-SU tozouya
toenda kunoona TV mu-common room.
Let us go to buy food from the SU (Student’s
Union Building), then we watch TV in the
common room.
(New Complex 2, 2 October 2000)
3 Ndadzikira pa-first gate ndichimhanyira ku-
lecture.
I was dropped at the first gate because I was
rushing for a lecture.
(Faculty of Arts corridor, 4 April 2001)
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2002, 20: 245–261 261

V e rb s Re duplicate dv e rb s
Sim p lev erbs 1 Anowanzo-phon-a-phon-a pa-weekend.
1 Ndiri kuda ku-borrow-a Syntactic Structures. He normally phones during the weekends.
I want to borrow the book Syntactic (Swinton foyer, 1 April 2001)
Structures. 2 Anogara achingo-smil-a-smil-a.
(Library, 2 March 2001) He always wears a broad smile.
2 Handina ku-understand-a, repeat-a zvaware- (Swinton, 1 April 2001)
va.
I did not understand, please could you repeat Ex tend e dv erb s
what you said. 1 Taka-promis-w-a mari na-Dean.
(Computer Centre, 10 September 2000) The Dean promised us some money.
3 Ukasa-attend-a lecture yacho unozo-cop-a (Swinton Dining Hall, 28 February 2001)
ma-notes angu. 2 Ndaka-apply-ir-a transcript.
If you do not attend the lecture you can copy I applied for a transcript.
my notes. (Administration building, 5 November 2000)
(Computer Centre, 10 September 2000) 3 Mati-convin-z-a chaizvo.
You convinced us.
(Chapel, 22 April 2001)