Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory & Practice

Centre Executive

Name:

Professor Margaret Deuchar

Position:

Professor and Director of the Centre for Research on Bilingualism

Email:

Location:

Room 205

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 382269

Biography

I came to Bangor in 1994 from a post in Cambridge, and before that worked at the Universities of Lancaster and Sussex.  I graduated from Cambridge in Modern Languages (French and German) in 1974 and then became graduate student in Linguistics at Stanford University in California on a Harkness Fellowship, completing my Ph.D. in 1978. My thesis was on British Sign Language and was followed by a book in 1984,  British Sign Language, published by Routledge. Shortly afterwards  I began research on bilingual acquisition and  published (with S. Quay) a book entitled Bilingual Acquisition: Theoretical Implications of a Case Study in 2000 with Oxford University Press.  I then extended my interests to bilingual adults, initially in the context of Wales. In 2005 I began a five-year project on Welsh-English code-switching in adults funded by the AHRC, and in 2007 I became Director of the Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice.  The Centre has five research groups of which I head the corpus-based group.

Research Interests:

My current research focuses on the question of how one can best account for the patterns found in conversational data from bilinguals, in particular code-switching, or the practice of speaking in both languages in the same conversation.  This is a topic which has become increasingly popular in recent years with linguists, psycholinguists and sociolinguists, and because of its amenability to study from various perspectives, is particularly conducive to interdisciplinary investigation.  Together with colleagues in the corpus-based research group of the Centre and in a related AHRC-funded project, my current concern is with the evaluation of current syntactic theories of code-switching, i.e. those theories that aim to account for code-switching within sentences.   An important question is whether it is possible to establish criteria to compare theories with which the proponents of the theories would themselves agree, and how code-switching data from various language pairs can be used to test these competing theories.  Data currently being analysed include naturalistic recordings of Welsh-English and Spanish-English bilinguals, with the collection of Spanish-Welsh data being part of our future plans.

Recent publications

(selection at the discretion of the contributor) listed by year, most recent first

  • Deuchar, M; and Davies, P. (forthcoming). Code-switching and the future of Welsh. International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
  • Deuchar, M., Muysken, P. and Sung-Lan Wang (2007), Structured variation in code-switching; towards an empirically based typology of bilingual speech patterns. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10:3, 298-340.
  • Deuchar, M. (2006) Welsh-English code-switching and the Matrix Language frame model”. Lingua. 116: 11, 1986-2011.
  • Leech, G.N., Deuchar, M. and Hoogenraad, R. (2005). English Grammar for Today.  London:  Macmillan.  [second edition]
  • Deuchar, M. (2005) Congruence and code-switching in Welsh. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8:3, 1-15.
  • Deuchar, M. & Vihman, M. (2005) A radical approach to early mixed utterances.   International Journal of Bilingualism 9:2 , 137-57.
  • Deuchar, M. & Muntz, R. (2003) Factors accounting for code-mixing in an early developing bilingual. In N. Müller, N. (ed.) (In)vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 161-90.
  • Deuchar, M. and Vihman, M. (2002).  Language contact in early bilinguals. The special status of function words. To appear in M.C. Jones and E. Esch (eds), Contact-Induced Language Change: An Examination of Internal, External and Non-linguistic Factors. The Hague: Mouton, 267-81.
  • Deuchar, M. and Quay, S. (2001). Bilingual Acquisition: Theoretical Implications of a Case Study.  Oxford: OUP. [paperback edition]
  • Deuchar, M. (1999). Are function words non-language-specific in early bilingual two-word utterances?  Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2:1, 23-34.
  • Deuchar, M. & Quay, S. (1999). Language choice in the earliest utterances: a case study with methodological implications. Journal of Child Language 26:2, 461-475.
  • Deuchar, M. & Quay, S. (1998). One vs. two systems in early bilingual syntax: Two versions of   the question. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1:3, 231-243.
  • Deuchar, M. and Clark, A. (1996). Early bilingual acquisition of the voicing contrast in English and Spanish. Journal of Phonetics 24, 351-65.
  • Deuchar, M. (1996).  The emergence of syntax.  In Johnson, C.E. and Gilbert, J.H., (eds) Children's Language, Volume 7.  Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum, 55-60.
  • Deuchar, M. (1996). Spoken language and sign language.  In A. Lock and C. Peters (eds)  Human Symbolic Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 553-570.
  • Deuchar, M. (1994). Son arbitrarios los signos lingüisticos?  In Barlow, H., Blakemore, C., Weston-Smith, M. (eds) Imagen y Conocimiento. Barcelona: Crítica, 1994, 133-146.
  • Deuchar, M. (1990).  Are the signs of language arbitrary?  In H. Barlow, C. Blakemore and M. Weston‑Smith (eds) Images and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,  168-179.
  • Deuchar, M. (1988). A pragmatic account of women's use of standard speech.  In J. Coates and D. Cameron (eds) Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex. London: Longman  1988, 27-32.
  • Deuchar, M. (1987). Negative incorporation in three sign languages. In J. Kyle (ed.) Sign and School.  Clevedon:Multilingual Matters Ltd, 35-43.
  • Deuchar, M. (1987). Sign languages as creoles and Chomsky's notion of universal grammar. In S. and C. Modgil (eds.) Noam Chomsky. Consensus and Controversy. London: Falmer Press, 81-91, 104-105.
  • Deuchar, M. (1987). Sign language research.  In J. Lyons, R. Coates, M. Deuchar and G. Gazdar (eds) New Horizons in Linguistics 2. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 311-335.
  • Deuchar, M. (1987). Sociolinguistics. In J. Lyons, R. Coates, M. Deuchar and G. Gazdar (eds) New Horizons in Linguistics 2. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 296-310.
  • Lyons, J., Coates, R., Deuchar, M., and Gazdar, G. (1987) (eds). New Horizons in Linguistics 2,  Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
  • Deuchar, M. (1985). The implications of sign language research for linguistic theory.  In W. Stokoe and V.Volterra (eds) Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Sign Language Research, Silver Spring,  Maryland: Linstok Press and Rome: Istituto di Psicología,  239-246. 
  • Deuchar, M. (1984). British Sign Language. London: Routledge
  • Deuchar, M. (1984). Diglossia in British Sign Language. Indiana University Linguistics Club.
  • Deuchar, M. (1983). Is BSL an SVO language?  In J. Kyle and B.Woll (eds) Language in Sign: International Perspectives on Sign Language. London: Croom Helm, 69-76.
  • Leech, G.N., Deuchar, M. and Hoogenraad, R. (1982).English Grammar for Today.  London:  Macmillan. 
    Woll, B., Kyle, J. and Deuchar (1981) (eds). Perspectives on British Sign Language and Deafness. London: Croom Helm.
  • Deuchar, M. (1980). Variation in British Sign Language. In B. Woll, J. Kyle and M. Deuchar (eds) Perspectives on British Sign Language and Deafness, London:Croom Helm, 1981, 109-119.
  • Deuchar, M. (1978). Diglossia in British Sign Language,  Working Papers in Sociolinguistics  46.
  • Deuchar, M. (1977). Sign language diglossia in a British deaf community, Sign Language Studies, 17,  347-356.

Other information

Current research funding:

2007-11: ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice.  M. Deuchar, C. Baker, V.C. Gathercole, G. Thierry,  ESRC,  £5,215,593
2007-10: The British Sign Language Corpus Project.  A. Schembri,  B.Woll,  K. Cormier, F. Elton,  R. Sutton-Spence, G. Turner, M. Deuchar,  D. O’Baoill, ESRC, £969,044.
2005-10: Codeswitching and convergence in Welsh: a universal versus a typological approach. M.  Deuchar, AHRC, £315, 922

Other roles:

  • Member of Advisory Committee, ESRC Research Centre for Deafness, Cognition and Language
  • Member of the External Advisory Board for the Center for Language Science at Penn State.
  •  Member of ESRC Linguistics Subject Panel, 2005 and 2007 Recognition Exercises
  •  Member of editorial boards of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
  • Guest editor of special issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, ‘Cutting Edge Research in Bilingualism’ Vol 10:3, 2007.

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