Code-Switching in Cebuano-English Classroom Instruction: A Semantic and Syntactic Analysis
Keywords:
code-switching, Cebuano-English, elementary instruction, NLP, MTB-MLE, semantic analysis, syntactic analysis, corpus linguistics, matrix language frame, Philippine multilingualismAbstract
This study investigates the structural and functional dimensions of code-switching between Cebuano and English in Grades 3–6 elementary classroom instruction across three public schools in Carmen District, Cebu, Philippines. Guided by Myers-Scotton's (1993) Matrix Language Frame model and Poplack's (1980) typological framework, a corpus of 847 teacher utterances comprising 12,438 tokens was constructed, transcribed verbatim, and annotated at the token level for language identity, part of speech, and switch-point occurrence. Quantitative frequency analysis alongside qualitative semantic domain mapping and dependency grammar-based syntactic parsing were employed to yield a multi-layered understanding of cross-language integration. Results demonstrate that intra-sentential switching dominates at 61.4% of all switching events, with Cebuano functioning exclusively as the matrix language while English occupies embedded technical and academic lexical slots. Semantic analysis confirms a clear functional complementarity: English governs academic-technical registers and Cebuano governs relational and classroom management domains. Three recurrent syntactic configurations are described, with pedagogical and computational implications discussed. The study contributes an original annotated corpus and a replicable annotation methodology for Cebuano-English NLP research, with direct applications to Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy and practice in the Philippines.
References
Aguilar, G., Kar, S., & Solorio, T. (2020). Named entity recognition for code-switched data: Building resources and training models from scratch. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 5419–5434). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.emnlp-main.437
Auer, P. (Ed.). (1998). Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity. Routledge.
Barman, U., Das, A., Wagner, J., & Foster, J. (2014). Code mixing: A challenge for language identification in the language of social media. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Computational Approaches to Code Switching (pp. 13–23). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/v1/W14-3902
Bautista, M. L. S. (2004). Tagalog-English code switching as a mode of discourse. Asia Pacific Education Review, 5(2), 226–233. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03026282
Bernardo, A. B. I. (2004). McKinley's questionable gift: Over a century of English in Philippine education. In J. W. Tollefson & A. B. M. Tsui (Eds.), Medium of instruction policies: Which agenda? Whose agenda? (pp. 155–173). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511605963
Cabasag, N., Barrios, A., Galvante, P., Andrada, M., & Morales, J. (2019). Hate speech detection in Filipino code-switched social media text. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval (pp. 76–80). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3342827.3342846
Canagarajah, A. S. (1995). Functions of codeswitching in ESL classrooms: Socialising bilingualism in Jaffna. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16(3), 173–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.1995.9994599
Canagarajah, A. S. (2011). Codemeshing in academic writing: Identifying teachable strategies of translanguaging. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 401–417. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01207.x
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Cruz, J. C. B., & Cheng, C. (2021). Establishing baselines for text classification in low-resource languages. International Journal on Natural Language Computing, 10(4), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.5121/ijnlc.2021.10401
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853596773
Dekker, D., & Young, C. (2005). Languages of instruction for whom? Language use in multilingual education programs in the Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Education, 6(1), 1–24.
Department of Education (DepEd). (2012). DepEd Order No. 16, s. 2012: Policy guidelines on the implementation of grades 1 to 10 of the K to 12 basic education curriculum effective school year 2012–2013. Department of Education, Philippines.
Dumanig, F. P., David, M. K., & Symaco, L. P. (2012). Language management in multilingual families in the Philippines and Malaysia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33(6), 527–540. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2012.706301
Fishman, J. A. (1972). The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Newbury House.
Gollan, T. H., & Ferreira, V. S. (2009). Should I stay or should I switch? A cost-benefit analysis of voluntary language switching in young and aging bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(3), 640–665. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014981
Gonzalez, A. (1998). The language planning situation in the Philippines. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19(5–6), 487–525. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434639808666365
Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and reality. Harvard University Press.
Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611834
Hornberger, N. H. (2003). Continua of biliteracy: An ecological framework for educational policy, research, and practice in multilingual settings. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853596568
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–31). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef
Khanuja, S., Dandapat, S., Srinivasan, A., Sitaram, S., & Choudhury, M. (2020). GLUECoS: An evaluation benchmark for code-switched NLP. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 3575–3585). ACL. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.329
Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33(1), 159–174. https://doi.org/10.2307/2529310
Leech, G. N. (1974). Semantics: The study of meaning. Penguin Books.
Li Wei. (2011). Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(5), 1222–1235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.035
Lorente, B. P., & Tupas, T. R. F. (2014). Demythologizing English as a language of development. In R. Rubdy & L. Alsagoff (Eds.), The global-local interface and hybridity: Exploring language and identity (pp. 69–85). Multilingual Matters.
MacSwan, J. (2000). The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: Evidence from intrasentential code switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(1), 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728900000134
Macnamara, J. (1967). The bilingual's linguistic performance: A psychological overview. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 58–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00576.x
Mager, M., Gutierrez-Vasques, X., Sierra, G., & Meza-Ruiz, I. (2019). Challenges of language technologies for the indigenous languages of the Americas. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (pp. 55–69). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Martin-Jones, M. (1995). Code-switching in the classroom: Two decades of research. In L. Milroy & P. Muysken (Eds.), One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching (pp. 90–111). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620867.005
McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2012). Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511981395
Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Clarendon Press.
Myers-Scotton, C., & Jake, J. L. (2001). Explaining aspects of code-switching and their implications. In J. Nicol (Ed.), One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing (pp. 84–116). Blackwell.
Parafita Couto, M. C., Munarriz, A., Epelde, I., Deuchar, M., & Oyharçabal, B. (2015). Gender conflict resolution in Spanish-Basque mixed DPs. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(2), 304–323. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728913000473
Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18(7–8), 581–618. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1980.18.7-8.581
Probyn, M. (2009). 'Smuggling the vernacular into the classroom': Conflicts and recursions in underprepared school language environments. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 12(2), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050802153137
Rubino, C. (2005). Ilocano. In A. Adelaar & N. P. Himmelmann (Eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (pp. 326–372). Routledge.
Samson, J. N., Tino, J. J., & Tumanda, A. R. (2018). Toward a Universal Dependencies treebank for Tagalog. In Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (pp. 198–208). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education — or worldwide diversity and human rights? Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Solorio, T., & Liu, Y. (2008). Learning to predict code-switching points. In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 973–981). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Tupas, R. (2015). Inequalities of multilingualism: Challenges to mother tongue-based multilingual education. Language and Education, 29(2), 112–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2014.977295
Tupas, R., & Lorente, B. P. (2014). A 'new' politics of language in the Philippines: Bilingual education and the new challenge of the mother tongues. In P. Siemund, I. Gogolin, M. E. Schulz, & J. Davydova (Eds.), Multilingualism and language diversity in urban areas (pp. 317–338). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hsm.7.15tup
UNESCO. (2003). Education in a multilingual world: UNESCO education position paper. UNESCO Publishing.
Valdez, P. N. M., Caña, R. J., & Minton, T. C. W. (2016). Results of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in reading and writing across grade levels. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25(5–6), 789–798. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-016-0309-x
Winata, G. I., Madotto, A., Wu, C., Shin, J., Xu, P., Xu, H., & Fung, P. (2019). Learning multilingual meta-embeddings for code-switching and adversarial examples. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2019 (pp. 3switching–3523). ACL. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/D19-6004
Zentella, A. C. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Blackwell.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Ana Aubrey Porlas, Ken Gorro (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
