Code Switching Among Medieval Catalan Jews

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Code-Switching and Dialogism: Verbal Practices among Catalan Jews in the Middle AgesAuthor(s): Joan A. ArgenterReviewed work(s):Source: Language in Society, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 377-402Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4169121 .

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Languagein Society 30, 377-402. Printed n the United Statesof America

Code-switching and dialogism: Verbal practices amongCatalan Jews in the Middle AgesJOAN A. ARGENTER

UniversitatAutonomade Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra (Spain)[email protected]

Froma strict inguistic viewpoint,code-switchingintertwineswith a diverserange of language contact phenomena,from strict interferenceto severalkinds of language mixture. Code-switching has also been addressedas aninteractionalphenomenon n everydaytalk,an approach hatimplies a syn-chronicperspective.In this article,however,dataaredrawn rom the recordsof communicative practicesleft behindby CatalanJewish communitiesofthe 14th and 15th centuries.These communities lived underwell-definedcultural,political, and social conditionsanddisplayeda rathercomplex lin-guistic repertoireof both linguistic resources and verbalgenres. I analyzetwo of these verbalgenres,which themselves must be viewed in the contextof a broader Hispano-Arabicculturaltradition;they draw on a heteroglotbackgroundn which SemiticandRomance anguagesmerged.Inthisanaly-sis of the functions that code-switching played in these verbal practices, acontrastemergesbetween the use of code-switching and lexical borrowing(oralternationvs. insertional ypesof code-switching)in both verbal genres.This has implicationsfor a much debatedissue - the alleged existence of amedieval CatalanJewish language - and challenges the idea that forms oflinguistic practicemust always be reduced to a bounded code. (Languagecontact,Hebrew/Catalan,code-switching,verbalrepertoire,verbalgenres,Jewish languages.)*

How to addresshim? Yonahdecidedquicklyto combineelementsoftheir double cultures. 'Peace be untoyou, SefiorSaadi.'-Noah GordonThephenomenonof CODE-SWITCHING,observedby Jakobson(Jakobson& Halle1956; Jakobson 1958), was treatedby Weinreich(1953:73) in his classic mono-graphon languagecontact.Gumperz1982 defined bothits formallinguistic fea-turesand ts communicative unctions n several social settings.Blom &Gumperz1972 pointedoutits social meaning;sincethen,a numberof researchprojectshaverevealedits ubiquityandhave contributeddataon numerouspairsof languagesinmany speechcommunities. Increasinglyperceptiveformalandfunctionalanaly-ses havebeenadvanced,orientedeithertoward hediscoveryof allegedly univer-? 2001 CambridgeUniversityPress 0047-4045/01 $9.50 377


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salgrammatical onstraints n theswitchingpoints nutterancesor n theirabstractcorrelate,hesentence),ortoward hedescription f thesocio-communicative unc-tions performedby code-switching itself in particularspeech communitiesandspeech events. In a furtherstep,the articulationof pragmaticor anthropologicalexplanationsfor thepresence or absenceof code-switchingin local communitieshas been attempted Heller 1988). Both the contrastandthe relevance of the op-position between local andglobalcontexts in socio-cultural,socio-economic,andsocio-politicaltermshave beenemphasized,and he idea of a localeconomyof lan-guageresources n speechcommunitieshasincreasinglytakenshape (Gal 1988).Thinkingin terms of language resourcesinsteadof languagesystemshasprovento be an importantchange in the search for a social foundationfor dynamic lin-guistic facts, as I hope will become clearbelow in my considerationof medievalCatalanJewishcommunities and theirverbalgenresandpractices.Code-switching is defined as the use of two languages or two codes in thesame communicativeevent between speakerswho arebilingualto a certainde-gree.As it is usuallyunderstood, hen,code-switchingimplies therecognitionofpreviouslycoexistingcodes andtheir nterplaywithinparticular peechevents inspeech communities.The data underanalysis show that this common premiseneeds to be qualified,even if one admitsthat,moreoftenthannot, the aforemen-tioned characterizationncludes very different kinds of linguistic and sociolin-guistic phenomena.Insofaras humancommunication- as can be observedin everyday experi-ence - involves linguistic, interactional,andsocioculturalcomponents,the issueof codes becomes highly relevantfor synchroniclinguistic, pragmatic,and an-thropologicalanalyses. It should come as no surprise,then, that concepts andanalyses elaborated romdifferingperspectivesprove contentious.If, in additionto synchronicdataandanalyses,we areconcernedwiththe way codes andcode-switching have manifestedthemselvesthroughhistory, n periods otherthan ourown, then we must also rely on other disciplines, such as philology, historicallinguistics,andsocial history.Thesemaylead us to look atthingsin a new light-eitherconsolidatingourcurrent onceptsandanalysesorleadingto realizationofthe need for a new conceptualization- but eventually they may also increasecontention.The importantpoint,however,is not so much how many alternativeanalyses are made available to ourdiscipline-drivenway of looking at dataandinterpreting hem, but ratherto what extent differing viewpoints can mutuallyenrichone another hroughcooperativelycrossingestablishedacademicborders.If anintegratedview emergesfrom this move, perhaps t will be seen as a furtherstep towarddevelopment of a precise methodologyin the field of historicalso-ciolinguistics, or a subfieldwithinit.Because code-switching is a phenomenon that is both inherent to bilingualconversation- andthus to the oraluse of language- andhas particularlydrawntheattentionof ethnographers f communicationand nteractional ociolinguists,it is understandable hat the synchronicapproachshouldhave prevailed. In this378 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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CODE-SWITCHING AND DIALOGISM

essay, however, I presentsome instances of code-switching drawnfromrecordedhistoricaldatafrom the Middle Ages, and I advance several explanations hattakeinto account the special natureof historic texts. If the search for diachronywithinsynchrony may improve the picture we obtain from both - according to Jakob-son's repeated suggestion, to Weinreich,Herzog & Labov's (1968) early formu-lation, and to Labov's systematicresearch then the projectionof synchronyontodiachrony may also reveal the latter's secrets.'CODE-SWITCHING IN WEDDING SONGS AND OTHERVERBAL GENRES IN 14TH-15TH CENTURYCATALAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES: THE DATATwenty-five years ago, Riera 1974 edited a collection of poetic texts composed inCatalanJewish communities in the 14-15th century.He did so with all the cau-tion requiredby such aljamiat materials,2given the restrictedevidence and theambiguities of the correspondencebetween the Hebrew and Latinwriting sys-tems. These texts were not numerous,but they were sufficient to furnish a sys-tematic picture of the phenomenon addressed here. They are instances of twoclearly differentverbal genres, which we may call "wedding songs"and "festivesongs."Thecollection includes four wedding songs and one festive song (piyyutnaeh) in Hebrew aljamiat writing,that s, in CatalanRomancewritten n Hebrewscript.This phenomenon was not uncommon in the IberianPeninsula,3whereChristians,Muslims, and Jews lived togetherfor so long, maintainingsignificantcultural nterrelations albeit not free of conflict - until the Jews were banishedfrom the Spanish kingdoms by the Catholicmonarchs n 1492, the sameyearthekingdomof Granada, he last Muslim stronghold n Spain,fell into theirpower;the "Moriscos," heMuslims who had converted to Christianityand remained nChristiankingdoms, were expelled in 1609.I reproducebelow fragmentsof two of these songs, following Riera'sreading,edition, interpretation ndglosses, with slight modifications.4I offer a more orless free translation nto English oppositetheoriginaltext. The Catalanverses ofthe text appear n romancharacters, he Hebrew n italics.The first is anexampleof the wedding song verbalgenre:

Shirnashir, Let us sing a song.nashir la-kalla shir hadash Let us sing a new song for the bride,shir nashir. Let us sing a song.Dona, vejats el maritsovfn; Woman, you should see yourhusbandoften;serviu-lo be, millor (o quin) take care of him as well as you can, do yourbest.digats si es grano poc o nin: Whetherhe be old or young or a child, tell him:"Dodili ben shaday yalin." "Mybeloved is lodged betweenmybreasts."

Shir hadash A new song.Si altra dona demanaper si Should he wish to marryanotherwomanvos passaula ma (bell bacf); pretty yourself,saludats:"Senyer,acf, aci andgreet him: "Sir,come here,Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 379


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marvaddimravadtiarsi.". I have deckedmycouch withcovers."Shir hadash A new song.Serviu-lo ben (a bon) pensir Take care of him the best you can,per tal que (als fets) ho puga servir for him to be able to serve you the bestDigats-li si'l vets abnuj6sni cosir: [at the same timeIf you see him annoyedor worried,tell him:"'Uri, 'uri,dabri shir." "Awake,awake,strikeup the chant!"Shir hadash.S A new song.

The second example is a fragmentfrom a "festive song," following the samerestrictionsandconventions as in the previouscase:Al tehallel passa qui primerdona He infringedthe precept:"Degradenotthy daughter"sa filla al zaqen, qui la-n feu zona. who firstgave her to an old man, who madea harlot of her.El zaqen se'n va a colgar al r^,shha-mita. The old mangoes to bed and falls asleepLa ne'ara lo desperta amb gran gevura. Theyoung girl awakenshim with great vigor.Lo zaqen li-n diu: "(Que n'es) tu sota The old man tells her: "Howcrazy you are!She'er we-kesutn'hauras,mas no pas 'ona." Youwill havefood and clothing,but not love."6La ne'ara li.n diu: "Perdutn'haveuel moah! Theyoung girl tells him: "Youhave no brains!No n'haveu virtutni punt de koah You have not the slightestvirtueor strength!Tot lo vostre feit es un bel ruah! "Allyou keep doing is but utter utility!"Mas io prec en Deu que en breu ne sia But I prayto God thatI become a widow soon."almana."

My intention in the following pages is to concentrate on both a formal and asocio-culturalanalysisof these two instances of secularverbalgenres amonglateMedieval CatalanJewish communities.These genres share, amongotherthings,the fact thatthey are constructedby means of a systematicuse of code-switching,even though the type of code-switching each manifestsis different.One of the propertiesof code-switching,at least as it was initially observedand studied,was that it appeared o be an ingroupform of talking (i.e., it wasproduced ncommunicationbetween membersof the same ethnolinguisticgroup,rather han between members of differentethnolinguistic groups;see Gumperz1982). This is also the case of the data consideredhere. Later studies did notnecessarily obey this restriction. This has allowed a surprising ncrease in theamount of observed cases of code-switching; however, in my view, it has alsocontributedto the erasure of one of the features that rendered code-switchingmost intriguingas a communicativephenomenon.Ourpreviousbasicdefinitionof code-switchingin the introductionwas rathergeneral and language-centered,and the data just presented, though they havereached us from written sources, were once intended as oral texts enunciatedthroughsinging andperformed n public. Of course, an analysis of these texts ispossible withoutreference o the social agents thatcreated,reproduced, nd trans-formedthem - and, most important,made sense of them. But in order truly tounderstand hese texts, we need to situate them in their socio-cultural and situa-tional context. Forthe understandingof an utterance s a function of at least its380 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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truth-conditionalalue, its situationalcontext,andthe broader ocio-culturalcon-text in which it is grounded.Insofaras this situationalcontextis builtup not onlyby the participants' ndividualcognitive structures, ncluding their presupposi-tional background,but also by their social interaction n specific settings in thereal world, this understandings always a socio-culturalconstruct.7Bearing in mind this socio-culturaland interactive construalof meaning insocially situatedutterances, he first problemforthe appropriatenterpretation fcode-switching in old texts is precisely the loss of the situational and socio-culturalcontextin which thecommunicativeeventswere anchored,orat least ourpartialknowledgeof it. To be sure, partof this context maybe recoveredfrom thetexts themselves, from independenthistorical sources,and,finally, fromthe pro-jection of comparablecontemporaryphenomena,the imposition of synchronyonto linguistic and communicativediachrony.This goal - the recoveryof mean-ing - resembles the philological pursuit:besides the correctreadingand carefulediting of an historicaltext, the philologist's ultimateaim is the interpretation fthe meaningthat this text entailed for those who produced t and those to whomit was addressed.However, the fresh interpretationhat speakers canprovide usin ethnographicresearchis not available when we are seeking the meaning ofhistoricaltexts,nor can we avail ourselvesof thefieldworker'sdirect observationof verbal behavior.8

Tobegin this analysis, therefore,we need some knowledge of the way CatalanJewish communitieslived in medievaltimes, particularly owardthe end of thatperiod.Unfortunately,we cannot ascertain unequivocally which local commu-nity was the source of these texts.9 However, informationis available on theJewishcommunities n the states of theArgonese crown- Aragon,Catalonia, heBalearicIslands,andValencia- all differingfrom one anotheranddifferingas awhole from Jewish communitiesin otherChristiankingdoms in Spain.10Inmedieval times, the Jewish communitiesof Cataloniamoved to thetowns atan early stage and increasingly adopted an urbanlifestyle, engaging in urban

socio-economicactivities andoccupations moneylenders,raders,officials,trans-lators,physicians, weavers,jewelers and othercrafts).Intheearly days, theJewswere spreadall over the city, but they soon tended to congregate in a certainquarter.This Jewish quarterwas usuallyestablishednear the walls or the castle,under the directprotectionof the king or the feudal baron. The relationshipbe-tween the lord andthe Jews was basedon an interchangeof services: protectionin return or financialaid, politicalcounsel, and medicalcare.TheJewishquarterwas not a ghetto,for its occupantswere free to move throughout he town. It hasbeen describedas a small town within a town (Cantera1998:150). The aljama,the institutionalorganizationof the Jewishcommunity,comprisedreligious, po-litical,juridical,socio-economic, andcharitable nstitutions; he urbanspaceoc-cupiedby thealjama was termedcall in Catalonia Romano 1979). 1l Thealjamahad its own laws andregimentation Hebrew taqqanot), and the Jews had to learnLanguage in Society 30:3 (2001) 381


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to live undera complexsystem ofjurisdictions Jewish andGentile,civilianandreligious.The institutionof thealjamawas createdat the end of the 12thcenturyor the beginning of the 13th. Fromaninstitutionalpointof view, theevolution ofthe aljama must be viewed from the perspectiveof a double, inner/outer dy-namic.The tensionbetweenoligarchicanddemocratic ormsof governmentwithinthe aljama was latentthrough he ages and manifested itself in the formof reli-gious movements thatusually were moreproneto castigatethe wealthy noblesthanto organizethe commoners on the lower end of the scale; but the need topreserve thecommunityfrom externalthreatsgave it internalcohesion at criticalmoments.'2The family was the basic social unit;the members of a family werestronglyboundtogethermuch as themembersof the whole communitywere.Themain events of family life were of utmost importanceand were regimentedbydetailed religious and liturgicalprinciples,but also by traditional olklore andcustoms. The birth of a child - particularlythe first-born- the betrothalandwedding of a brideandgroom,orthe deathof a loved one were events associatedwith public and/or family rituals.The Hebrewfamily andsociety were patriar-chal; the mainroles assignedto womenwerethat of wife andmother,andrepro-duction of thelineage;herdaily tasks werelookingafterher husbandand childrenandhousekeeping.A woman's social status in medieval Jewish society was re-flected by her lower legal standing:she was subordinate o the authorityof herfather,husband,or malefamily headandhad no economic autonomy.Moreover,she was free fromthe positive religiousprecepts(mizwot) anddid not count fortheconstitutionof aminyan, he minimumnumberof ten individualsrequired orcommunalworship (only malesover 13 yearsof agecounted).As aconsequence,women were unschooled both in literacy and in the Hebrewlanguage.'3None-theless, the motherwas the object of affection andrespect within the family andwas portrayedas the mistressof the house (Cantera1998:82-7). One of the ver-bal genres underanalysis reflects both certain secularwedding rituals and therole that a marriedwoman was expected to play.In a way, one can see this genrenotjust as areflection of aprevailingsocialpatternbut also as a type of discoursecommitted to reproductionof this pattern.'4A thematic inkbetween this wedding song andthe festive song is the fact thatboth concernmarriage.The injunctionmade in the latter not only casts light onthecliche of the ill-marriedwoman(treated n moredetailbelow), but also bearson the legitimacy of concubinage. The mystical-ascetic movementrepresentedby the Kabbalists, along with ethical-social tendencies in the 13th century,induced a transformationn the rabbis' thinking on this point. An influentialCatalanrabbi,JonahGirondi,was the first to promulgate heprohibitionof con-cubinage,in the following terms(the emphasis is mine):

Degrade not thy daughterby making a harlot of her, lest the land fall intoharlotry,and the landbecome full of lewdness (Lev. 19.29).Therabbisexplain(Sanhedrin76a) thattherein one is warned not to permithis daughter o enter382 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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CODE-SWITCHING AND DIALOGISMinto sexual relationsnot sanctionedby wedlock ... for concubinage,withoutformal wedlock, was permittedonly to the king, whose authorityeffectivelyrestrainedothers fromhaving converse with his concubine, so thatthe king'srelationto her was tantamount o marriage.Beyond this royal privilege therabbisdecreedthat relationseven with one's brideare forbiddenuntilthe mar-riagebenedictionshave been pronounced.Intercoursewith a slave woman is acapitalsin ... for the sinner defiled theholiness of God by loving andpossess-ing "the daughterof an alien god" (Malachi 2.11). His alien offspringwill bea snare to him and a reminderof his sin. (quotedin Baer 1961:256).

A comparisonof this text with the festive song exemplifies how traditionalreli-gious materialcould be recycled again and again for differentpurposesas theoccasion demanded,whether for a festive song or a rabbinicaldictum. As weassume a socio-culturaland contextual construalof meaning,this materialmightbe interpretedn several ways, dependingnot only on its moral and ritual rangebut also on its efficacy as an authorizedvoice (see below) and its function as ameans of legitimizing and "naturalizing"he discourse of power.The reference appearsonce more in a similar context, a responsum15 by an-other nfluentialreligiousauthority,Rabbi SolomonIbn Adret of Barcelona,whoreinforces Jonah Girondi'sposition (emphasismine):Firstof all, I must say that this thing is prohibitedandvile besides. The pro-hibition is clearly biblical, for such action violates the biblical injunctions,"There shall be no harlotamong the daughtersof Israel"(Deut. 23. 18), and"Degradenot thydaughter by makingher a harlot"(Lev. 19. 29). It is also avile practice,for this reason. Before the Revelation of the Toraha man mightmeeta womanin the street,and if they pleasedeachother he would have carnalrelationswithher,and thenhe would eitherkeepheras his wife or else payherthepriceof her favorsandgo his way. But theTorahhas consecratedmarriageand establishedthelegal and ritualprocedures orsuch a union.Inmany placesthere s even a communalstatutewhichprovidesthat a marriageceremonycantake place only in the presence of ten men, and that the bride's father andmother,or other relatives of hers, and the hazzan of the kahal must also bepresent.Certainlymarriageby seductionis utterlyforbidden,andit is all themorereprehensiblewhendoneby a man who alreadyhas a wife; forbigamousmarriage,even when properlycontracted,was bannedby RabbenuGershom,of blessed memory,except that Maimonideswas inclined to permit polygamy,as practicedby the Moslems. (quotedin Baer 1961:435)16Before proceedingto analysis of the poetic texts, I shall consider the culturaltraditionfrom which these genres were borrowedand evolved, as well as their

historic, linguistic, sociolinguistic, and culturalbackground.This analysis willtake us towardissues such as (i) the differentkinds of sequentialadjacencyofco-occurring anguages in these Romance-Hebrewcompositionsvs. theirAnda-Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 383


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lusian Arabicmodels - a juxtapositionof literaryvs. vernacularanguage beingimplied, at least in the lattercase; (ii) the contributionof code-switchingto theconstructionof the poetic frameworkas regardsits poetic, stylistic, rhetorical,and discursivefunctions;(iii) the typology of code-switchingthat can be drawnfromthese texts; (iv) the superpositionof code-switchingandintertextuality,aswell as the superpositionof code-switchingandpolyphony; (v) thejuxtapositionof the profane and the sacred n one verbalgenre,and the culturalambiguitythatderives from this fact in termsof deauthorizing/actualizingnauthoritative oice;and (vi) thedynamicrelationshipbetweentypesof code-switchingandtheemer-gence of fused lects or mixed varieties.Finally,I discuss a relevanttopic occa-sionally raisedin connection with the type of language mergingthatappears nfestive songs; (vii) whetherthis mergingshould be understoodas an instanceofan old CatalanJewish language.After debatingsome of the misconceptionsas-sociated with this topic, I advancemy own conceptualandmethodologicalpro-posal fordealingwith it. This proposalaims to providea soundsocially orientedbasis forthephenomenonstudied,and it takesas a startingpointtheview that wearedealingwith verbal resources(rather hanlanguagesystems) andattempts ouncover their allocation in the language economy of a particularlycomplexcommunity.ANALYSIS OF THE DATA: TRADITIONAL LINKS, INNERSTRUCTURE AND CONTEXTUALIZING PRACTICESThe discovery of muwashshahsandzajals, two innovativestrophicformsin Ar-abic poetry,originatingin Al-Andalus- the name given to the territoryunderMoorishrulein theIberianPeninsula n medievaltimes- apparentlywithoutanyconnection with the pre-Islamictradition,along with the mid-20thcenturydeci-phermentof Mozarabickharjas by S. M. Stern(1948, 1949) uncovered a sys-tematic use of code-switching in traditional poetic compositions. The firstdocumentedmuwashshahsdate fromthebeginningof the 11thcentury,althoughit has been suggestedthatthey may have been invented in the early 10thcenturyandorally transmitted ince then. These compositionscame to be imitated lateron by the local Hebrewpoets, and to be collected either in aljamiat- Hebrewwritten n the Arabicalphabet orHebrewwriting.ThisHebrewmuwashshah stermed shir ezor or, ezor pizmon.17Scholarlydebateconcerningthese Arabiccompositionscenteredbasicallyon(i) theirformal andthematicdefinition, (ii) theirorigins, and, intertwined withthese two, (iii) the issue of apossible relationwithMedieval Romanceliterature,particularly hat of the troubadours.The muwashshah a girdle poem - is com-posed of a preludeof rhymingverses, for instanceAA, followed by a series ofstropheswhere each is madeupof two elements:first, a sequence of monorhymeverses (e.g., bbb),andsecond,arefrain hatresumesthe initialrhyme.Thus, theirform, spelled out accordingto a specific rhyme patternand its conventional rep-resentation,could be representedas AA bbbaa. The zajal differs from the mu-384 Language in Society 30:3 (2001)


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washshah n thatthe refrainreproducesust half therhymepatternof theprelude:AA bbba.However,at least forthe Hebrewcounterpart f muwashshah,evidencefrom recordedsourcessuggests thatthe preludewas repeatedaftereach strophein song or collective recitationby the audience, and so the complete form ofmuwashshahwould follow an AA bbbaaAA rhymepattern.Otherwise,the mu-washshah follows the model of classical Arabic poetry in terms of theme, lan-guage, and style, whereas the zajal, though also a courtly genre, is writtenincolloquialArabicanddeals withtopics inappropriateorthe muwashshahgenre.Finally, a constant feature of the muwashshah,in contrastto the zajal, is thepresence of a closure or concluding refrainin colloquial Arabic or Romance -that is, in one of the two local vernacular anguage varieties. This closure, inArabic termedkharjaor markaz,often represents he voice of a maidenlament-ing the absenceof herbeloved.As far as origins are concerned,once the possibility that these two strophicformscame from the Oriental raditionwas excluded, thedebatecenteredaroundtwo problems:determiningwhether there was a possible genetic relationshipbetween the two, and exploringwhetherthey arose underthe influence of someautochthonousRomance form. In orderto progress from conjectureto actualevidence, it was necessaryto find concrete links, whetherthese were formal orthematicor both. The most objective datumin this respect was the existence ofthe Mozarabic kharjas.The style of the kharjasandthe fact that they are moresimilar othe Galician-Portugueseantigasd'amigo18than o anythingelse knownin classicalArabicpoetrysuggeststhe existence of a similaroraltraditionalgenrein Romance.This Romancegenre may have had a patternsimilar to that of themuwashshahand could thus have given birthto the latter.Up to this point, therewas relativeagreementamongscholars.However,the third ssue, the questionofthe influence of Hispano-Arabicpoetry on Romance poetry,proved more con-troversial.Thedebate s betweenproponentsof thetheoryof theHispano-Arabicoriginof Provencaland Galician-Portuguese roubadourpoetry- and, by exten-sion, most laterEuropeanpoetry- and those scholarswho were always ratherskepticalon this point.However,this is not the occasion to examinethese claimsin detail.Nevertheless, the linguistic interestof these compositions is great, for theyreflect the linguistic andsociolinguisticcomplexityof the society inhabitingAl-Andalus in the Middle Ages. They also revealtheconsequencesof the symbiosisof Semiticand Romance anguagesspokenby Mozarabicpeopleand also adoptedby the Muslims, whetherof Arabic or Berberorigin, and by the Jews. Islamicinvaders,whether Arabic or Berber,were much less numerousthan the nativeinhabitants f thepeninsula.The latterspokeaRomancedialectknownas Mozara-bic, which they did not give up even when they became islamized and learnedArabic.The islamized natives (called muwalladsin Arabic)andthe newcomersmergedto a certainextent into a single communityof humanbonds and socialinterests,andmost of the invaderslearnedto speakthe Romancelanguage.ThisLanguage in Society 30:3 (2001) 385


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means thatAl-Andalus Muslims werebilingualormultilingual some spokeBer-ber as well). Five languages or languagevarieties were widely used. ColloquialArabic was spoken by MuslimsandJews,eitherautochthonousorallochthonous,as well as by most Christians. The Romance vernacular was spoken by theMozarabs,as well as by Muslims andJews as a second language.Generally, heuse of these vernacularswas independentof people'sreligiousaffiliation. Incon-trast, iterary anguageswere distributedaccordingto religiousaffiliation.Clas-sical Arabic,also used as a courtly and formal language,was the only literarylanguageof the Muslims.Eventuallyit would also be used by Christiansand, ina rathermoreeverydayway, by Jews, who wroteit in Hebrewscriptwithintheircommunity.The liturgical andliterary anguageof the Christianswas Latin,al-though they could also use Classical Arabic. Finally, the Jews, who had bothArabic and Romance as vernacularsand used both the Arabic and the Hebrewwritingsystems, used only Hebrewas a religious andpoetic language.To borrow from Bakhtin 1981, and in accord with recent developments inlinguistic anthropology,we can term this sociolinguistic situation one of POLY-GLOSSIAand HETEROGLOSSIA.That is, the situation was characterizedby bothmultilingualism(coexistence of severallanguagesin the same social space) andby thecoexistence of codes that maintaineda dynamicrelationwith one another.These codes need not have coincided with any well-establishedlanguage fromthe viewpoint of linguistics and/or local politics; rather, hey were made up ofvariousverbalresourcesof different inguisticorigins.Theywerepartiallysharedby the social groups and theirmembers andunequallydistributedamong them,andthey expressedtheirusers' social position, cohesion, andcleavages. At thesame time, the dynamicrelationshipamong these codes prevents us fromseeingthe existing heteroglossia as merelythe result of juxtaposition. On the contrary,the codes intersectedandcriss-crossed, and they were created,maintained,andgiven up by virtue of theirinterrelations n the activities of social groupsand ininteractionsbetweenmembers of different social groups,resultingin a peculiarkind of sociolinguistic stratification.'9

There weregreatdifferencesbetween the social situation n lOth-1 th centuryAl-Andalus andthatof 14th-l5th centuryCatalonia.These differencesnotwith-standing,therearecertainundeniablesimilaritiesbetween the verbalart formsreviewedaboveand the CatalanJews'compositionsedited by Riera,although helatterbelong to a later age and wereby then expressedin the Romancevernacu-lar- Catalan, nthis case - in spite of theirpoeticcharacter.Withregard o the useof code-switchingas a resource n verbalexpression,particularlybut not only inartistic verbal expression, two aspects should be emphasized.The first is thecontrastbetweenthe olderHispano-Arabiccompositions andthese songs of theCatalanJews, insofar as the sequentialrelationshipbetween the languages in-volved is inverted in the latter: ndeed, in them the bulk of the composition is ina Romance language, but the refrainand the verse closing the stanza are in a386 Language in Society30:3 (2001)


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Semitic language, Hebrew. Second, there is a significant contrast between thewedding songs and the festive poetry with respect to the kind of code-switchingthat appearsin them. That contrast between the two Judaicverbal genres alsoinvolves other elements - formal, thematic,and stylistic.20The wedding songs are true epithalamia.Their traditionalgenre is attestedinJewish communities hroughout he Diaspora.According ohistoricalrecords, heirperformancenvolved a concertedactionby membersof thecommunity.Once theliturgical part of the marriageceremonywas over, the new spouses sat down onthronesoppositeeach other.Weddingsongs were addressed o either thebride orthe groom, to the accompanimentof a lute, flute, or brasshorn, while young andolddancedaround.21The songsofferedto theyoung couplewere either akenfroma traditional epertoire relse composed forthe occasion,usuallybased onthe mel-ody of well-known local folk songs. The tenorof these wedding songs could beeithergraveandmoralizingor mischievous,even lewd. The participants nthe fes-tive eventwere,of course,membersof thelocal Jewish community,but they maybethoughtof as a communityof practice(Eckert & McConnell-Ginet1992, 1999;Holmes & Meyerhoff 1999): "anaggregateof people who come togetheraroundmutualengagement n anendeavor" Eckert&McConnell-Ginet1992:464).22Theparticipantsn theweddingfeastprobably ulfilled thethreecriteriaof a commu-nity of practicein Wenger'sterms (cited in Holmes & Meyerhoff 1999:175): (i)mutualengagement;(ii) ajoint negotiatedenterprise;and(iii) a sharedrepertoireof negotiableresources accumulatedover time. Wedding songs are partof theseshared raditional esources.At the sametime, these songs are constructedout ofsharedavailable verbal resources:here, from Catalangrammarand lexicon, He-brew formulas (shir nashir, shir hadash), biblical lines, strophic patternsofHispano-Arabicorigin,rhymes commonto Catalanand Hebrew,code-switching,etc. Inparticipatingn the social event, people engagedin acommon pursuitandactivated sharedvalues, beliefs, andideologies. They made sense of themselvesand othersthrough heirparticipationntheevent andtheircontributiono it (Eck-ert & McConnell-Ginet1999:186). Membership n theJewish community mightbe externallyconstructed i.e., assignedfromtheoutside; however,membershipin the communityof practicewas internallyconstructed.Forparticipants,enact-ing the performance hat createdthe communityof practicewas also a way of en-hancingtheirmembership n the Jewish community.Let us now turn to formalanalysis of ourCatalanpoetic texts. They are com-posed of seven, eleven, or fifteen monorhyme stanzas, specifically quartets,ofoctosyllabic masculine-ending lines, the last of which is in Hebrew and repro-duces a biblical line, in a more or less successful echoing of the meaning andsyntax of the threepreviousverses in Catalan.The prelude-refrain,also in He-brew,is the same for all the compositions, except that the word referringto thegroom (hatan)is substituted or thewordreferring o the bride(kalla), as appro-priate.Ittypicallycontributes o thearrangement f discourseby artfully framingit andbreaking t into patternedpieces.Languagen Society30:3(2001) 387


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Typologically,the instancesof code-switchingin thistextbelongto one of thetwotypesdistinguishedbyAuer1998b:alternation ode-switching.Scholarshaveoutlined various typologies of code-switching from either a formal or a func-tional point of view. I mention here the one advancedby Muysken 1994 andretainedby Auer1998b.Inparticular,Auer- whotakes adynamicandparticipant-orientedapproach o bilingual speech- distinguishesbetweenthe "alternation"type andthe "insertional" ype of code-switching.In the former,"a returnafterthe switch into the previouslanguageis notpredictable";n the latter,this is notthecase, but"acontentword... is inserted nto a surrounding assageintheotherlanguage" 313-14). Thefirsttype usually takes place ata syntacticclause bound-ary and is used as a rhetorical/stylistic device; the latterusually affects smallconstituents (a word or a ready-madeexpression) without threateningthe lan-guage of interaction.Catalan/Hebrewcode-switchingin wedding songs fulfillsat least the formal features that Auer attributes o alternationcode-switching,even though in this case - counteringthe first termof Auer's description- theswitch back to Catalan rom Hebrew is predictable rom the poetic or discursivepatternof the song, once this pattern s grasped.23Moreover,the function of code-switchingin this case seems fairlyclear: for-mally, it accomplishesa demarcationof the poetic text, specifically of the stro-phic blocks (or stanzas)in which the discourse is structuredandframed,as wellas at least a double indexical function: while it points toward the text's poeticcharacter,t also indicates its ethnic affiliation.Furthermore,hiscode-switchingis ademonstration f intertextuality, olyphony,anddialogism withrespectto thecommunicativedomain within which it has beencreatedandexists, andby virtueof its presence,this verbal extcomposedin a"modern"anguagebecomesrootedin averyoldtradition, o that t canbe seen as aconsequenceof the revealed wordof ancient times. Intertextuality s present, then, because the last line in eachstanza refersto a verse fromthe scriptures;24 olyphony,becauseof the sequen-tial adjacencyof distinct voices - the moralizinghuman voice addressing thebride, andthe divine lover's revealed voice whose words areput in the bride'smouth; and dialogism, because these voices interact,the latterintroducingtheformerwhile the formerrespondsto the latter,even appropriates t, and, in sodoing, transforms t and makes it sound a little ambiguous, half reproducing tspower,half de-authorizingt. The authoritative oice25 as in the case of sacredlanguage - demands the speakers' acknowledgment, their unconditional alle-giance. It comes froma distantpast; it is hierarchicallyhigherthan any contem-poraryvoice; andits authorityhasalreadybeen acknowledged n the past. It is theword of forebears,and as such, it is a priordiscourse. It is also a hieratic dis-course,to be taken andpreservedas an undividedwhole thatcannot be manipu-lated. Hence, it cannot be contextualized n another'sdiscourse;that is, it cannotbe smoothly framedby means of a gradualtransition it may be either cited orrecited,but not used to constructone's own discourse.Nonetheless, we are con-388 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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frontedwith the fact thatsegments of the authoritative raditionalvoice are ac-tuallyused to construct he weddingsong (the use of the term"used"as opposedto merely "mentioned"s intentional).By this very fact, these lines are taintedwith culturalambiguity.All this notwithstanding, he use of Hebrewin the con-text of Romancepresupposesand indexes the local Jewish community and theritual characterof the communicativeevent (the weddingfeast), while its draw-ing not only on the Hebrewlanguage but also on the holy texts of the religioustraditionconfers legitimacy andefficacy on these songs, as they are anchored nthe sourcefrom which all legitimacy andauthorityemanate.In contrast,what we find in the one "festivesong"of the collection editedbyRiera is very different. Formally,this song could be deemed a zajal, since itfollows themetricalpatternAA, AAAA, BBBA, CCCA,. . ., AA. The numberofsyllablesperline variesfromeightto twelve; theonly constantelementis thefourword-stresses,which give birthto diverserhythmicpatterns hatmatchthe mel-ody. The topic of the composition is the traditionalone known in Catalanas lamalmaridada, "the ll-marriedwoman"),or, to putit in emic terms, the infringe-mentof the biblical injunctional tehallel (Lev. 19, 29: "Degradenot thydaughterby makingaharlotof her").In this case, however,the code-switchingusedis verydifferentfrom that of the wedding songs. Here the Catalanbase language of the

text appearsmerged with seven Hebrew expressions and 19 different Hebrewwords.The code-switching is of the insertional type (Auer 1998b). By the verynatureof the data,it may not be easy immediatelyto distinguishbetween code-switching and lexical borrowing,althoughthe numerouscases of rhyme-wordsmust certainly be treatedas instances of code-switching; these are almost allHebrewand at the same time constitutemost of the Hebrewmaterial n the com-position.26Again, the presence of Hebrew words in this poetically prominentposition shows us both its demarcative- line-demarcative,in this case - andindexicalfunction.Auer'spredictability ondition forinsertionalcode-switchingfits here,since a switchback to Catalancangenerallybe expectedaftera Hebrewrhyme-word.27This is also trueof the otherinstancesof code-switching or bor-rowing in the song. However, this does not seem to respondto rhetorical actorssuchas versepatternsorcomposition,butneitherdoes it respond,except in somesporadiccases, to specific culturalconcepts in the Jewish tradition.Together,thesefeaturesraiseanotherquestionwhichwill be exploredbelow: whether hereexisted a medieval CatalanJewish language.28Riera(1974:9) considersthis linguistic mergingas providingneither"origi-nalitynoranincreasein aestheticvalue,"even thoughhe concedes thattheauthorhas been original in being "able to find enough Hebrew words to complete therhymes."Now, it is a well-establishedfactthatrhyme,so closely relatedto soundpatterns n itself andhaving both cleardemarcativeandcohesive functions,alsohas a bearingon grammatical tructure. naddition, t is not strangeforrhymetoLanguage in Society 30:3 (2001) 389


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acquire a lexical import (compare the cases of derivative rhymes, equivocalrhymes, the sestina'srhyme-words,andothers). Moreover, f therhyme incorpo-ratescode-switching, then this representsan increased value- if not in aestheticterms, always a matterof taste, at least in terms of descriptivepoetics. Further-more, in addition to the cited demarcative,cohesive, and indexical functions ofrhyme-words,the presence of other borrowed material leads us to think that adifferentialcode, independentof poetic genre, might have been emerging; inotherwords,thesedatawouldpointto the existence of what Riera refers to as "aparticulardialect of Catalancalls." This issue deserves separatecomment,as ithas led to variedinterpretations nd even downrightconfusion well beyond thefield of Catalanmedieval studies.Before proceedingwith this discussion, let us turnonce more to our festivesong. If the "Catalan ewishdialect"really existed, then we would have to ques-tion whether hispiececouldbe seen ascontaining ode-switchingatall,orwhetherthe Hebrew elements in rhyme-positionwereaccomplishinga demarcative unc-tion within a mergedcode.29Werethat the case, we would be in a positionto askourselves whether there is any point in maintaining he assumptionthat "code-switching implies the recognitionof previously coexisting codes and their inter-play within particularspeech events in speech communities,"as stated above.This is undoubtedlya faircharacterizationn termsof grammarand lexicon fromtheanalyst'spoint of view,but it need notbe so from aninteractional,participant-orientedpointof view. Indealingwithconversationalcode-switching,it has beenobservedthat codes may be achieved througha negotiationof communicativeinteraction; hatis, codes mayemergeas anoutcomeof on-linebilingualspeech,and not just as a preconditionfor code-switchingcommunicationto take place(Auer 1998:15).This line of thought eads naturally o therecognitionof "mixedcodes,"code-switchingside by side with othertypes of merging phenomena.30Comparisonof the two genrespermitsus to draw some conclusionsregardingcontroversial ssues in the field of codes andcode-switching.The first one hasbeen tentativelyenunciated.Inaddition,as suggestedin note23, the predictabil-ity vs. unpredictability ebateand heeffortstodistinguishbetweencode-switchingandborrowingturn out to be cruciallydependent, n texts of these types, on thepoetic framing unctionthatpatternsof verbalartassign to switching. Thisshouldbe viewed as a new instance of the subordination f linguisticfacts to the "dom-inant" - in Jakobson's early term - in poetic texts.31Althoughgrammatical onstraintsoncode-switching arenot a concernhere, itshould be noted, as a descriptive remark,that lexical borrowing and/or inser-tionalcode-switchingin our text is a choice that selectively involves arguments,notpredicates(nouns ornounlike categories).Furthermore,hese code-switchedelements combine with Catalanspecifiers, modifiers, and prepositions.32Boththese facts maybe linked to the choice of matrix anguage.However, I shallnotderive theoreticalimplicationsfrom them. Indeed, it would appeardifficult toargue for a process of grammaticalizationaking place, unlike in the case of390 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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Hebrew/Englishpragmaticmarkersobservedby Maschler 1998 andcommentedon by Auer 1998a;rather t would seem more a process of relexification.Riera states that"thereareclues enough ... to believe thatthese poetic com-positions containmorethanone featureof thisdialectthat until now has notbeenstudied by anybody."This view is difficultto refute,33 houghit would appear orelyon aprioribelief, albeitfoundedon rationalclues. In anycase, the issue is notat all a trivial one: Can we state empirically that Jews in the medieval Catalancalls spoke a specific languagedifferentfrom the Catalanspokenby their Chris-tian contemporaries?This matterhas been a source of controversyamong spe-cialists in medieval CatalanJewry.34ANALYSIS OF DATA AND RELEVANCE TO AN ALLEGEDCATALAN JEWISH LANGUAGETo begin with, recall that major scholars of Judaism (J. A. Fishman and C.Rabin, among others), have been at the forefront of study of the several ver-nacularsspoken in the Jewish Diasporathroughouthistory,and they have en-gaged in propounding he linguistic phenomenathatthey labelled as the Jewishlanguages - for example, the Yiddish and the Sephardic languages and theirvarieties (in the latter case, we may mention Ladino and Judezmo).35In ap-proaching he studyof such languages, attentionmustbe paid to the roles playedby such phenomenaas mixing, borrowing, calque, and other forms of syncre-tism.36Mixing and calque, for instance, were determinant n the emergence ofLadino,which should not be confused with the SpanishJewish vernacular,Ju-dezmo. In fact, Ladinois a "calque language"born out of the process of word-for-wordtranslationof holy and liturgical texts,37 n such a way that it may becharacterizedas Hebrew - eventually Aramaic - syntax implemented with aRomancelexicon, or,morefiguratively,"Hebrewdressedup as Spanish" Sephi-ha 1991:165).38 Its originscan be tracedback to the 13thcentury.Judezmo, bycontrast,is a spoken language,a conservativeform of Castilianthat was main-tainedby the SephardicJewish communitiesin the NearEast, the Balkans,andNorthAfrica aftertheirexpulsion from Spain; we find it throughthe 16th cen-tury,andit appearsto have been clearly individuatedby the first quarterof the17th century (Sephiha 1974:170). Since then, the interplayand reciprocal in-fluence between these languages may have tended to "vernacularize"Ladinoand "Ladinize"Judezmo. In addition, the hazardous and migratoryhistory ofJewish communities, as well as the internalreligious and culturalmovementswithin Judaism,is often reflected in the evolution of these Jewish languages.39Study of these languages, then, could prove fertile terrainfor study,in that thekind of linguistic phenomenabeing dealt with can always be acknowledgedandcontrolled.For the Catalanarea,side by side with Catalantexts containingsparse Hebrew loanwords - like those in the festive song dealt with here -there exist many texts by CatalanJews in Hebrew replete with borrowingsLanguage in Society 30:3 (2001) 391


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from Medieval Catalan,as shown by E. Feliu's translationsand studies (e.g.,1988-89), among others. Calque translationsalso belong to this local tradition(see, e.g., Riera 1971-75).In oppositionto Sephiha'spicture,otherscholarsgive support o theview thatboth Ladino andJudezmoantedateexpulsion.Wexler1988 argures hat "theex-istence of a colloquial judaized language is a prerequisite or a Jewish calquelanguage",and also that "theobsolescenceof the formerentails theobsolescenceof thejudaized calque anguage" 1988:2). According o thisview,a Jewishcalquelanguage (Ladino) rootedin the 13th centurywouldimplya vernacularanguageof equal,if notgreater,antiquity.Now, if Ladinoactuallycame intobeing throughscripturalpractices,it had no previous independentoralexistence.Wexler'spoint, however,is notonly advocating or apeninsular,prior o 1492,origin of a Judeo-Castilian anguage, as he termsit, but (i) asserting"thepriorexistence of a Judeo-Catalananguagethat derived fromJudeo-Latin", ii) pos-iting "aJudeo-Arabic ubstratumn Judeo-Castilian", nd(iii) dating"the switchfrom Judeo-Arabic o Judeo-Castilian rom as earlyas the 11thcenturyin somepartsof the Peninsula"(Wexler 1988:10-1 1). A rathercomplex nonlinearevo-lution of Judeo-Ibero-Romanceanguages emerges from his picture, in whichboth genetic relationshipsfrom a Judeo-Latin anguage to Judeo-Romance an-guages andlanguage-shift rom some of these to IberianJudeo-Arabic,and backagain, are taken into account.Wexler discriminatessix chronological stages inthis development (1988: 14-16).Severalmisconceptionshave spread n this field, but these affect the studyofCatalanJudaismneitherexclusively normainly.Some of themarose fromcalquetranslationsor,even moreabsurdly, romaljamiatRomancetextsbeing takenforinstancesof asupposedJewish vernacular for an example, see Magdalena 1993).Within the specific field of Sephardicstudies,there is furtherconfusion betweenthe Sephardic language and a possible variety that may have been spoken byCastilianJews, or even those of other peninsularkingdoms,before the expul-sion.40The lattermisunderstanding uns contrary o not only linguistic but alsohistoricaldata,and t falls into anachronismwheninterpreting heterritorial angeto which the termSepharad has been applied in several historicalperiods.41Even today, in a recent review of the Romance Jewish languages, Sala 1998distinguishesbetween those that, ike Sephardic,have a"well-defined" tructure,and those whose structure"one has not been able to define," such as the hypo-theticalCatalanJewish language and the ProvencalJewishlanguage. In the samevein, Sala distinguishesbetween those languages thatexist beyondthe bordersoftheirbase language,such as Judezmo,andthose thatpotentiallycould exist withinthese borders; he latter would be true of the CatalanandProvencal Jewish lan-guages. Finally,he distinguishes between those that have survived and are stillspoken, albeit steadily fading (Sala 1970), such as Judezmo, andthose that arealready extinct, if they ever existed, such as the rest of the Romance Jewishlanguages. Sala is clearly uneasy in dealing with this matter n general and with392 Language in Society 30:3 (2001)


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CatalanJewish in particular,at least insofar he attemptsto treat it as an autono-mous, self-contained linguistic system (Sala's first distinction between "well-defined" and "ill-defined" anguages speaks for itself). This may be due to thelack of documentarydata, to thenatureof these data, or, as Riera suggests, to thelack of studies, but it also may be due to the nonexistence of a specific languagein the sense usually understoodby linguists.At this point, I suggest a shift of perspective and propose to adopt a ratheranthropologicalpoint of view, rather hancentering the debate on the linguisticnotion of a language- or dialectal variety- as an autonomous,self-contained,

rule-governedsystem. Thehypothesisis that n medieval society, as in any other,therewere social agents who, in everyday life and for everyday purposes,inter-acted in accordancewith certainsocial behavioral patterns.These included par-ticularcommunicativepractices which tended towardthe elaborationof sociallydifferentiatedcodes by means of which certain connotations of individuals' eth-nic, religious, or social affiliationwere conveyed. These agents were making useof thelinguisticresourcesatthedisposalof thecommunity; or instance, it seemsthatthe pejorative vocabularyborrowedheavily from the Hebrew lexicon (Sala1998),42while certain"Christianisms"ndArabismswere avoided (Sephiha1991).This usage was taking place in a specific socioculturalcontext, ranging over awealthof communicativeevents,and also in a specific social contextwith its ownorderand conflicts, institutions andgroups, established traditionsandintrudingdynamics.These socially situatedsettings engendered heteroglossia, as consti-tutedby the dynamic centrifugalconcurrence of interrelatedsocial codes. Onesuch code is to be thoughtof as a concrete sociolinguistic belief system thatdefines a distinctidentityfor itself within a surroundingheteroglotcontext. Thiscode is not to be understoodas a well-definedunitary anguage system- indeed,these systems, as faras they existed, werepartof the heteroglotcontext- but, inBakhtin'swording, it "is pregnantwith possibilities of furtherdialectologicalindividuation: t is a potentialdialect, its embryonot fully formed."To summa-rize:"Language n its historical ife, in its heteroglot development,is full of suchpotentialdialects ... ; some fail to develop, some die off, but others blossom intoauthentic anguages" (Bakhtin 1981:356).It is my contention that from this heteroglot picturetheremay have emerged,among others,a code that would match the ill-defined notion we areconcernedwith.This mightalso lead to a more realisticandsocially well-foundedapproachto the hypotheticalexistence of "adialectof Catalancalls." Oneway of thinkingof this expression'sdenotatum akes it to be a definitively crystallizedlanguageentity,side by side with CatalanorHebrew;a somewhat differentview sees it asa dynamicco-occurrence of linguistic resources, where some form of "organichybridization" akes place.43The transitionwe have seen above from the alter-nationtype of code-switching to the insertionaltype may be more than a merecoincidence. After all, such a transitionplays a progressiverole in the hypoth-Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 393


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esized continuumfrom code-switching to language mixing, and then to fusedlects, as arguedby Auer 1998bin his dynamic approach o atypology of bilingualspeech.Now, theanalysis shouldproceedto examinewhetherand to whatextentit would have been possible for a case of linguistic syncretismto appear44 as aconsequence of aparticular ymbolicusageof the availableexpressive resources,as well as aparticularmanagement i.e., theadoptionof certainways of speakingand the rejectionof others)of the linguistic variability hat this syncreticcontin-uum offered to the speakers,individuallyand as members of groups and sub-groups within their community and the society at large, in orderto adapt tochangingcommunicative circumstances(to a rangeof well-defined events andsettings, or to the dynamics of social change). If all this makes any sense, wecould then move on to consider whether he use of some of these codes mayhavebeen partof a strategyof neutralizationof socio-culturaldifferencesor identityconflicts, rather han a mere constructionof specific verbalgenres.45It is obviously difficult to draw conclusions about this sort of spoken usagefromwrittenrecords,and even moreso when we aredealingwithcommunities nwhich scripturalpracticeshad reacheda level of considerableimportanceandautonomy.46Nevertheless,the research trategy ust suggestedwouldlikely provemore profitable and effective than the cul-de-sac to which the expression"adi-alect of the Catalancalls" leads, in its literallinguisticsense - theexistence of anautonomousself-containedsystem(provided,of course,thatwe do not confuse itwith thecalque language appearingntexts thataretranslations,naphenomenonparallel to Ladino,a confusionagainstwhich Rierawarnsus; see note 37). Fur-thermore,this new approachis applicablenot only to verbal practices or thecreation of oralcodes, which may or may not include cases of language syncre-tism, but also to scripturalpractices and the codes derived from them, whichembrace such phenomenaas aljamiat writing, calque translations, exical bor-rowingfrom Romancein Hebrew texts and from Hebrew inRomance texts,47aswell as code-switching with multiplenonexcludingaims - rhetorical, stylistic,discourse-building,andindexingboth the historicalcommunicativedomainandthespeakers'awarenessofbelongingto anethnic, social,andreligiouscommunity.In strictly linguistic terms, then, we can but share the position expressed byFeliu when he states:

Then,the Jews who inhabited he main towns in Catalonia n the High MiddleAges undoubtedly poke thelanguage of this country,andthey continued o doso when lateron they spreadall over what is now modem Catalonia,and thiswas the language they spoke when they were banishedfrom the country.Thishad always been their everydaylanguage. In all likelihood, they also spokeotherlanguages,just as people did both then and now:Arabic- those hailingfrom Muslimterritories,andAragonese, CastilianorProven9al,when circum-stances andrelations required. 1998-99:91; my translation rom Catalan)48

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By implication, then, CatalanJews did not speak, in their everyday life, alanguageseparate romthatspokenby their Christiancounterparts.49 eliu's ar-gument,however, does not end here. Instead,it follows naturallyfrom his pre-vious statement that Catalan Jews "never had Hebrew as their own spokenlanguage, althoughin exceptionalcases they might recurto it (to communicatewithJewsfrom othercountries just asthe Christiansdidwith Latin- or to avoidbeing understoodby Christians n certainwell defined situations,etc.)."Thatis,Feliu's first statementdoes not imply thatHebrewwas not used at all, either inoral or writtenform.As for writtenlanguage,Feliu states:Althoughthis writtenformof the Hebrewlanguageis usuallycalledMedievalHebrew,this is not at all a new establishedlinguistic system, comparableinsome way to Biblical orMishnaicHebrew:rather t is the resultof the use thatdifferentauthors n manycountriesand in areasof bothMuslim andChristianculturemadeof a form of Hebrewatthattime,conditionedas they wereby thesociological, political and linguistic environmentwithin which they lived.(1998-99:91-2).

A similaropinionis expoundedby Rosen (1995:55ff).50 This is not to deny that"the Jews in Cataloniamasteredthis writtenHebrew very early andtherewereauthorswritingin Hebrewsince the middleof the 11thcentury,"or that"some-times, however,even when the masteryof Hebrewas a languageof culturewascomplete, if they thoughta Hebrewwordwould not be immediatelyunderstoodby the reader, heyresortedto the vehicular anguage(written n Hebrewscript),andthis vehicularlanguage was always, as should be obvious, Catalan" Feliu1998-99:92). Whatever hereasons,this systematicrecourseto the lexicon of thevernacularwhen writingin Hebrew is a well-establishedfact - as is recoursetoHebrewwhen using Catalan,as we have seen. This phenomenonis not rareinsituationsof languagecontact,but it is a clue to the permissivenessandperme-abilityof the use of the availablelinguisticresources.In this respect,however, itshouldcome as no surprise hat differentauthorsor groupsin the same commu-nity haddifferentattitudesand verbalpractices,just as they had differentideo-logical attitudeswith respect to the understandingand identity of a commonJewish tradition.5'Undoubtedly,Feliu clings to a traditional, inguisticallyorientedapproach othis issue, or at least his answerimplies a traditional inguistic framework,evenif it includes clear references to the broadersetting of historical, political, andsocietal processes. It is from this strictly linguistic stance that I am inclined toagree with him. However, I have arguedin this essay for a ratherdifferent ap-proachwhich takes as its basic tenet thatresearchshouldcenteron the explora-tion of threeproblemareas:Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 395


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(i) The community'savailable verbalresources,rather hanself-containedlinguisticsystems- thesesystemsor theircorrelates ormingpartof theseresources.52(ii) The verbalpractices of speakers and social groups andcommunitiesinsocially situatedand well-defined speech events.(iii) The ways of speakingused by speakersin their interactions, eading tocertain systems of verbalgenresand codes thatconvey particular ocialmeaningand express the speakers'reciprocalsolidarityor conflict andtheir membership (inclusion or exclusion), and that give birth to a so-cially conditioned andheteroglotstratificationof language.These codesshould not exclude forms of linguistic syncretism.

CONCLUSIONCode-switchingappears ntertwinedwith a rangeof interlinguisticphenomena nlanguage contact,from strictinterferenceto several kinds of language mixture.Code-switchinghas been studiedprimarily n everydaytalk and in social inter-actionbetween membersof aparticular peechcommunity,whichimplies a syn-chronic approach.My aim has been to approacha numberof cases of code-switchingastheyappear n therecordsof communicativepractices eft behindbymembers of pastcommunities,living withinwell-definedcultural,political, andsocial conditions anddisplayinga rather omplex linguisticrepertoiren termsofbothlinguisticresourcesandverbalgenres.Myresearchhasfocused onthemulti-lingual,multiethnic,religiouslydiverseIberianPeninsulaof medievaltimes,andparticularlyon CatalanJewish communities in the 14th-15th centuries.Weddingsongs andfestive songs have been presentedagainsta broadercon-text of Hispano-Arabicculturaltradition rom which their forms had been bor-rowed and re-elaborated,and also in the context of the linguistic merging ofSemitic andRomance anguagesandspeechvarieties.This was followedby analy-sis of thepoetic,discursive,and ndexicalfunctionthatcode-switching- whetherof the alternationor insertionaltype - plays in them.The contrast between thecode-switching practices (alternationvs. insertional)and forms of lexical bor-rowing found in the two verbal genres led to consideration of anothercrucialissue for anethnographyof speakingof thesecommunities:whetherornotthereexisted a medieval CatalanJewishlanguage.I am ratherskepticalwith regard o this linguistic entity for a numberof rea-sons: the very small corpus of data available, their nature,and their potentialconfusion with non-vernacularinguistic, or ratherscriptural,practicessuch ascalque-translations,n these and otherJewish communities. I stronglysuspect,however,thattheredid exist ethnically andsocially markedcodes in a complexheteroglotcontext in medieval times in Catalonia.My proposal, then, is to ap-proach the issue by focusing on the linguisticresourcesavailable to the commu-nity,on the verbalpracticesdevelopedby its members n definite socio-cultural396 Languagen Society 0:3(2001)


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andsituationalcontexts, andontheresultingways of speaking and thecreationofdynamicandeventually syncretic codes thatexpressedsocial position, solidarity,and cleavages - inclusions and exclusions - of social agents in theireverydaycommunicative interaction.

NOTES*Albeit retrospectively, first and foremostthankJ. Riera and E. Feliu for their valuable effort tomake medieval verbal art and other linguistic material of Catalan Jews accessible to the Catalanreader. especially thankE. Feliu for his comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article

which he was kind enough to read. I am also indebted to P. Auer, M. Heller, J. Hill, M. Nahir,andK. Woolard or discussion and suggestions on a more advanced version. It goes without saying thatresponsibility for its final form and content is my own, as is responsibility for its shortcomings.Thiswork has benefited from financial aid from the Direcci6n General de Investigaci6n Cientifica yTecnol6gica, researchproject numberPB96-1155.l Jakobson's seminal idea can be traced throughhis work from at least 1927 (e.g., his study onthe historicalphonology of Russian, his statementof the principles of diachronic phonology, andthe Retrospective Overviews n his Selected Writings).See also Jakobson& Halle 1956, and Wein-reich, Herzog & Labov 1968, which was a first attempt at the constructionof an empirical foun-dation for linguistic change. See especially Labov 1974 for an appraisalof the research strategyapplied here.2Aljamia denotes texts in Romance writtenin Arabic or Hebrew script,and also Arabic texts inHebrew script.It could thus be said that the use of aljamia- or aljamiatwriting- is a kind of culturalhybridizationof linguistic/scripturalpractices.3See below for reference to Arabic/Romance and Hebrew/Arabicforms of aljamiat writing.4 The texts of threeof these songs hadbeen previously edited and analyzedby Lazar 1971, with atranslationof the Hebrewpassagesand some philological comments.I keep to Riera's edition, aimedat Catalanreaders,althoughI adapt the Hebrew passages to English conventions. My translationdepartsfrom his glosses at some points.5 The last lines in each stanza correspond o the following lines of the following biblical books,respectively: Song of Sol. 1, 13; Prov.7, 16;Judg. 5, 12.

6 Food, clothing and sexual relations were the three areas in which a husbandwas obliged toprovide for his wife.7 For a critiqueof formal theoriesof meaningin North Americanlinguistics and a defense of asocio-culturalandcontext-dependentconceptionof meaning, see Hanks 1996.8 This serious handicaphas not been an insurmountable bstacle in the writingof ethnographiesof communication or groupsof the past. Bauman's(1983) study of the early Quakercommunitiesin17thcenturyEngland s a case in point. Of course, even direct observationand nterpretation re neverunproblematic.9 Riera 1974 suggests as plausiblethe communitiesof Gironaor Perpinya n northernCatalonia.10A main source for the studyof medievalJewish communities n Spainis Baer 1961-66. Cantera1998 is also useful for everydaylife in these communities.l l Aljama,from Arabicalgamda,means"thecommunity,"whose Christianequivalentat the timewas universitas (later,ajuntament).Call comes from Latincallis, corresponding o Spanishcalle. Onthe internalorganizationof the communityandits conflicts, see Baer (1961:212-36).12 See Baer 1961, passim.13 A quotation roma 16th-centurymanualde inquisidores llustrates hepoint:"Womenwerenotobliged to performpublic worship, and they never gatheredwith men [for prayer], nor were onehundredwomen worthmore thanan unweaned nfant for the purposeof accomplishingthe number.Pious women had their roomnearthe Synagogueand a rabbiprayed n Romance for them theprayersuttered n Hebrewin the Synagogue.There was no obligationof numberamong them."(quoted inCantera1998:84, my translation).

14 A thematic comparisonof our wedding song addressedto the bride with a wedding song ad-dressed to the bridegroomwould illustrate this point. I will not pursuethis line of inquiryhere.Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 397


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JOAN A. ARGENTER15

A "reply" o a questionputforwardby another abbi,communityor amemberof thecommunityon interpretation r applicationof a religiousor legal norm.Responsawere a characteristic abbinicgenre and were collected in books of "questionsand answers."16 The hazzan, or "singer,"was a servant n the synagogue.17 A deep-rootedpreeminenceof thereligious tradition n the Hebrew worldprevented he rise ofsecularpoetry among the Eastern communities.Conditions were more propitious,however, in theJewish communities underMuslimrulein Al-Andalus,insofar as these were not so subjectto tradi-tional patternsandgrew prosperous n an environmentof religious toleranceandgreatculturalandethnic diversity, as has been described (Baer 1961:18-21). The influence of refined Arabicliteraryand culturalmodels was of the utmost importancefor innovation in verbal diction, prosodic andmetricalpatterns, hyme,strophicpoetry,etc., andan increase n therangeof verbalgenresandtopics.An important ocial factor nthedevelopmentof secularHebrewpoetrywasthe roleplayed byJewishnoblemen. The relationshipbetween the noble and the poet was one of patronageand protectionagainstconservativereligiousforces. This institutionbeganto decline in the mid-12thcentury n theMuslimkingdoms,but the model was thentransferred o Christian erritories.18 Cantigas is the traditionalname for old Galician-Portuguesepoetic compositions that wereintended o be sung. Thesecompositionsmightbe lyricalornarrativen character.Usuallythree maingenres are distinguished:the so-called cantigas d'amor ("love songs"), cantigas d'amigo ("male-friend songs"), and cantigas d'escdrnio e maldizer ("mocking and slanderoussongs"). Both thecantigas d'amor and cantigas d'amigo are love songs; they differ, however, because the formerexpress a man's love for his beloved, while the latterexpress a woman's loneliness because of theabsence of herbeloved andher longing for him.The relevantpoint is thatin the cantigas d'amor, itis a manwho speaks,while in the cantigasd'amigo, it is a woman.These threetypes do notexhaustthe catalogueof genres in Galician-Portuguesemedievalpoetry.19 I use "stratification" n a rather ax sense, in line with Bakhtin,as opposed to the technicalmeaningassigned to it in Laboviansociolinguistics. As far as the use of the notion"heteroglossia"sconcerned, my source is its currentuse in linguisticanthropology. tshould be pointedout,however,that in line with Bakhtin'sgoals, a distinctionshould be bornein mind between heteroglossiaas aphenomenon of everyday languages and language usage in historicalspeech communities, and itsintentionalrepresentation n a novel for artistic purposes, which is the primary aim of Bakhtin'sreflections.20 Inkeepingwith theaimexpressed n theprecedingnote, in Bakhtin'sview heteroglossia and itscomponentsapplymoreto prosewriting than to poetry. He statesclearlythat"heteroglossiaor evena foreign language is completely shut out of a poetic work,"althoughhe concedes that "a certainlatitude for heteroglossiaexists only in the 'low' poetic genres, in the satiricand comic genres andothers" 1981:286-87). Indeed,both verbalgenresin our Jewishsongs maybe consideredas belong-ing to this category.I think,however, that Bakhtinmainlyhas in mindwrittenauthorialpoetry ratherthantraditionalpoetic verbalart, with its diversity of oralgenres,or else his ideas shouldbe qualifiedfrom the point of view of ourcurrentknowledgeof whattraditionaloralpoetry is and how it comesto be "crystallized" Nagy's term,1996:108-9). Insofaras these compositions- notonly epic songs-mightwell be performedwhile composing andcomposedwhile performing Nagy 1990, 1996), theynecessarily mpliedadialogicalrelationship f potentiallyheteroglotvoices andconsciousnessthroughtime andspace.21 Dancing in public was often forbidden by the rabbiswithin the communities. Wedding andbridalfeasts, however, were particularlyappropriate ccasions for groupdance.22 The community of practice differs from the traditionalcommunity primarily "because it isdefined simultaneouslyby its membershipandby the practice in which this membershipengages"(Eckert & McConnell-Ginet1992:464).23 This remark,however, is not intended to invalidateAuer's description.Auer's aim in the firstplace is to account for conversationalcode-switching, not the kind of textual phenomena we areconcerned with. In fact, one of the oldest cases of alternatingcode-switching I am aware of is 6th-centuryGreek/Latinantiphonal inging. Itis saidthat, n order o prevent hecongregationgossipingduringthe liturgy, Caesariusof Arles made them participate n it by learning and singing hymns,

alternatingaversicle in Greekwithone in Latin.This was in all likelihood alternation ode-switching,even though the switching was absolutelypredictable.Obviously,this is notalways thecase in poetictexts;rather, t dependson code-switching'sacquiringan inherentdiscourse-patterning uality.Theanalysisof the "festivesong" will illustratethe assertion.398 Languagein Society30:3 (2001)


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CODE-SWITCHING AND DIALOGISM24 In a ratherbroadinterpretation f the term, it is not only the code-switched Hebrewpassagesthat show specific intertextuality,but the whole composition could be deemed intertextual n a ge-neric sense, insofar as its formevolved from Hispano-Arabicmuwashshah.25 Cf. Bakhtin (1981: 342-43).26 Out of 30 lines, only four employ a Romance rhyme-word, one of these being the first one,reproducedhere. For an alternativeview, however, see below.27 See note 23. Additionally,the switch back is not always completed, and the rhyme-word s notalways code-switched either (see also note 26).28 At least, they have been taken as posing such an issue by Riera 1974, and will provide us withan opportunity or discussion.29 This pointwas suggested by PeterAuer (personalcommunication).It implies - or induces - aparticular nterpretation f the issue in hand.30 Illustrativeare the argumentsby Alvarez-Caccamo 1998, as is the evidence he provides onSpanish/Galician,and that offeredby Moyer 1998 on Yanito,or a Spanish/English code-switching

pattern n Gibraltar.31 "The 'dominant'may be defined as the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, deter-mines, and transforms heremainingcomponents. It is the dominantwhichguarantees he integrityofthe structure" Jakobson1981:751).32 DiSciullo, Muysken & Singh 1986, seeking to accountforformal constraintsoncode-switchingin termsof dependencyrather han linearity, n a GB framework,provided for the switch between aspecifierandits head by meansof the neutralizingcharacterof the former.Similar argumentsappearin Nortier 1995 and are criticized by Alvarez-Caccamo 1998:35.33 The forcefulnessof thefinalpart, n which the authorregrets (or at least acknowledges) the lackof study prevailing on this issue, contrastswith the prudentwisdom of the initialpart, in which thevery existence of the dialect is not at all taken for granted.34 I remembercausing a heated controversyby daring even to discuss the issue. Nonetheless, thepassionwith which a prominentmemberof the BarcelonaJewish community anda scholarof Catalan

Jewish heritagearguedfor the existence of a Catalan Jewish languagewas not proportionate o theevidence at hand.I canonly assumethat their attitudewas more a functionof currentCatalanJewishfeeling and self-perceptionthanan effort to reconstruct he historicalpast.35 See some arguments or the need to distinguishthese modalities in S6phiha 1974, reiterated nS6phiha1991.36 These same phenomena have also played a significantrole in the elaboration of Modern He-brew.Cf., e.g., Fishman 1987.37 See, e.g., Sephiha 1974, 1991, and the references to his own bibliographythere. As Riera ad-vises in relation to the Catalanarea (1971-75:54-55), it is also importantto distinguish betweenaljamiattexts andtranslationsromHebrew,whichare often literaland word-for-word.Thelanguageof these translations s not the reflection of a spoken dialect but a writtenand often recited varietywhich takes on the appearanceof a mixed languageowing to its origin.38 Unlike "mixedcodes," a "calque anguage"necessarily involves both two previouslyexisting

languagesandthe emergenceof a new code.39 Besides Fishman's andRabin'swork, amongmany others, see, as a contribution rom the Cat-alan area,Berthelot 1993.40 See note 41. For a clarificationof the issue, see, among others,Riafno1993.41 See a clarificationof the matter n Feliu 1998-1999, who cites rich documentation.42 As a case in point, see our "festive song."43 As Bakhtinwouldhaveit, referring o definedtypes of (unconsciousandimpersonal)utterancelanguage mixing in historical everyday languages, as distinct from intentional and individualizedartisticutterance anguagemixing"witha representedanguageand arepresenting anguage,"aimingat creating an "image of a language" (a key concept in his conceptual framework). (Cf. Bakhtin1981:358-62).44Toput t in the termsof J.& K.Hill,who borrow heterm romKurylowicz(1964:40),who, work-ing only withinthe frameworkof internal inguisticanalysis,understood he termas "thesuppression

of a relevantoppositionin certainconditions."InadoptingandreinterpretingKurylowicz'sterm,Hill& Hill try to avoid the ambiguity, problems, and connotationsthatthe use of the term"mixedlan-guage"has traditionallyprovoked.As anthropologistsandlinguists studyinga determined anguagecontactsetting,they applythenotionto adynamicsituationcharacterizedby a selective use of thever-Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 399


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bal resources n the dual continuumof the concurrentanguages (NahuatlandSpanish,in theircase)andbytheprocessesofrelexification, yntactic onvergence/divergence,hybridization/differentiation,semanticorsyntacticcalque, andothers hatgive birth oparticularwaysof speaking(atthe sametimethat they exclude other ways of speaking)withina given society and a socio-culturalsettingdeter-minedby local relations as well as by the globalcontext into which this society is inserted. Withoutfallingintomechanicalretrospectiveprojections, suggestthatHill & Hill's conclusionsmayservetoilluminate he situationwe areconcernedwithhere,bearing nmindthecautionthat he case demands.45 However,the fact of centering sociolinguisticresearchon the topic of conflict has all too ofteninduced scholars to think of neutralizationas the suppressionof one of the relevant terms of anopposition,as expoundedby linguists (see Kurylowicz'sdefinitionin theprecedingnote),rather hanthe coexistence of both or suppressionof the relevance of the oppositionitself. This dichotomouseither/or thinking at the level of structure not just reminiscentof but identified with Saussureanparadigmatic elations- may occasionallybe reinterpreted s a both/andfeatureat the level of dis-course andsocial interactionpractices.What s impliedin this reflectionis a case of the exploitationof simultaneity n the prototypically sequentialnatureof speech as it appearsto our currentunder-standing. For the deploymentof similarideas, see Woolard1999, who emphasizesthe influence ofBakhtin'swritingson anthropological hinkingin this respect.46 As far as ourtexts are concerned,an addeddifficulty shouldbe noted in this respect:the factthatthey arepoetic texts means their contribution o our knowledge of everyday social life hetero-glossia is rather limited and indirect. This holds true irrespective of Bakhtin's views on poeticgenres (cf. note 12).47 All references are to texts in Hebrew script,whetheraljamiat (when the languageis Catalan)ornot (when the languageis Hebrew).The songs considered above pertain to the former and the bor-rowed words are Hebrew,as we have seen. A differentphenomenonis representedby the Hebrewwordsin Romanscriptfoundin Christiandocuments(e.g., notarial,royal, ecclesiastic, etc.) concern-ing such issues as purchaseand sale contracts, nventories, legacies, legal contentions,andreferringto Jewish items andconcepts (the monthsof theJewishreligiouscalendar, iturgical easts, names ofthe biblical books, concepts fromTalmudic aw, names of the institutionsof the aljamas or Jewishquarters,with theirassembliesand synagogues,andso forth).48 "Hence,CatalanJews in the 10th centurymighthave been bilingual in Arabic and Romance,with Catalanas theirprimary anguage."(Wexler 1988:6).49 It may be relevanthere to rememberwhat has been said about women's illiteracyandlack offamiliaritywith the Hebrewlanguage;see note 13.5 "Medieval Hebrew is not one language."(Rosen 1995:56). But he immediately adds: "Wewould not go so faras the studentsof Medieval Latingo andsay that there was no MedievalHebrewbut 'several Medieval Hebrews'."(Ros6n 1995:56).This notwithstanding,Rosen understands"Me-dieval Hebrew"as a Traditionssprache ndtraces a parallelismbetween MedievalHebrew and Me-dieval Latin, in that both were languagesof a sacredtradition,"whichthose who were concernedmadeaneffort to transfer o secularuse";both werelanguagesof a written radition"which hose whowere dedicated to their maintenancedesired to create afresh in order to rend them suitable for oral

usage";both were languages "withreference to which an endeavourat modernizationwas made inorder to assurethem a relativelywide diffusion in living use" (Rosen 1995:59). However, his pro-posed programof research aims at accounting for a pluralism of shapes of Medieval Hebrew- notonly itsArabicizedoritsAshkenazi forms, "butalso for a Germanized,Francized,ItalianizedHebrewlanguage,to mentiononly the more importantbranchesof Jewish literature." Rosen 1995:58). Ob-viously, these forms of Hebrew are not to be confused with Jewish languages.Sl See, forinstance,Feliu 1991, 1998-99:13-14 aproposof the grammarian rofiatDuran secondhalf of the 14thcentury)andhis descriptionof the doctrinalgroupsof his time: the Talmudists, herationalists those who philosophized following the Greeks- and the Kabbalists,among others whodid not share the same final aim.52 Ofcourse,I am notdenyingthe validity of defining linguisticsystems as a way of improvingourknowledge of linguistic reality, provided we bear in mind that these are but theoreticalconstructsorabstractionspartially to encompass this reality. It should come as no surprise that code-switching

cannotbe accommodatedwithin available well-defined linguistic systems as linguists have under-stood them.Likewise, neithershould we be surprised hatcode-switching and other forms of linguis-tic mixture and syncretism are part of both language reality and social reality, if these may bedifferentiated oranalyticalpurposes.Ourunitary ystematic concept of language s, more often than400 Languagein Society 30:3 (2001)


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not, the resultof an ideological constructand/or, at its best, a scientific construct.I think we shouldstrive to be aware that the latter derives from the former,rather hanthe other way around. No oneshould feel uneasy aboutthat;even acknowledgment hatthis is the case does not imply that inguisticsystems arenot rationalscientific constructs.

REFERENCESAlvarez-Caccamo,Celso (1998). From "switchingcode" to "code-switching":Towards a concep-tualization of communicativecodes. In Auer 1998c, 29-48.Auer, Peter (1998a). Bilingualconversationrevisited. In Auer 1998c, 1-24.(1998b). Fromcode-switching via language-mixingto fused lects: Towardsa dynamic ty-pology of bilingual speech. InternationalJournal of Bilingualism3:309-32.(1998c), ed. Code-switching n conversation.London & New York:Routledge.Baer, Yitzhak (1961-66). A history of the Jews in ChristianSpain. 2 vols. Philadelphia,PA: JewishPublicationSociety of America.Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The dialogical imagination.Ed. M. Holquist. Austin: University ofTexas Press.Bauman,Richard (1983 [1990]). Let your words be few. ProspectHeights, IL:Waveland.Berthelot,Martine (1993). Les judeollengiues:Formaci6,evoluci6 i decadencia. Treballsde Socio-linguistica Catalana 11:89-94.Blom, Jan, & Gumperz,John J. (1972). Social meaning in language structure:Code-switching inNorway.In J.J.Gumperz&D. H. Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics, 407-34. New York:Holt, Rinehart& Winston.Cantera,Enrique 1998). Aspectos de la vida cotidianade losjudfos en la Espaiia medieval. Madrid:UniversidadNacional de Educaci6na Distancia.DiSciullo, Anne Marie;Muysken, Pieter; & Singh, Rajendra(1986). Code-switching and govern-ment. Journalof Linguistics22:1-24.Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet,Sally (1992). Thinkpracticallyand look locally: Languageandgenderas community-basedpractice.AnnualReviewof Anthropology21:461-90., ~~ (1999). New generalizationsand explanationsin language and gender research.Languagein Society 28:185-201.Feliu, Eduard 1988-89). Mots catalansen textos hebreusmedievals:Els dictamensde Salom6 benAdret. Calls 3:53-73.(1991). La gramaticacom a pretext:El Ma'ase Efod de Profiat Duran.Anuari de Filologia14:103-15.(1998-99). Quatrenotes esparsessobre el judaisme medieval. Tamid2:81-122.Fishman,Joshua A. (1987). Post-exilic Jewish languagesand pidgin/Creoles: Two mutuallyclari-fying perspectives.Multilingua6:7-24.Gal, Susan(1988). The political economy of code-choice. In Heller 1988, 245-64.Gumperz,JohnJ. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.Hanks,WilliamF. (1996). Languageand communicativepractices. Boulder,CO:Westview.Heller,Monica (1988), ed. Codeswitching:Anthropologicalandsociolinguistic perspectives. Berlin:De Gruyter.Hill, Kenneth,& Hill, Jane(1986). SpeakingMexicano:Dynamicsof syncretic language in CentralMexico. Tucson:Universityof Arizona Press.Holmes, Janet,& Meyerhoff,Miriam(1999). The communityof practice:Theories and methodolo-gies in languageandgenderresearch.Languagein Society 28:173-83.Jakobson,Roman (1958). Typological studies and their contribution o historical and comparativelinguistics. In Proceedings of the Eighth InternationalCongress of Linguists, Oslo: UniversityPress.(1981). Selected writings,vol. 3. The Hague:Mouton.,& Halle,Morris 1956). Phonologyandphonetics.In Fundamentalsof language,TheHague:

Mouton.Kurylowicz, Jerzy (1964). Theinflectional categories of Indo-european.Heidelberg:CarlWinter.Labov,William(1974). On the use of the presentto explainthe past. In Proceedings of the EleventhInternationalCongressof Linguists,vol. 2, 825-51. Bologna.Language in Society 30:3 (2001) 401


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Lazar,Moshe (1971). Epithalamesbilingueshebraico-romans ansdeuxmanuscritsduXVe siecle. InMelanges dephilologies romane,dedies a la memoirede Jean Boutiere(1899-1967), vol. 1, 333-46. Liege: Soledi,Magdalena,JosepR. (1993). Las otras udeolenguasde Sefaradantes de laexpulsi6n. In Ribera1993,73-82.Maschler,Yael(1998). On thetransition romcode-switchingtoa mixed code. InAuer 1998c, 125- 49.Muysken, Pieter(1994). The typology of code-switching. Didlogos Hispdnicos 15:11-21.Moyer, Melissa G. (1998). Bilingual conversationstrategies.In Auer 1998c, 215-34.Nagy, Gregory(1990). Greekmythologyandpoetics. Ithaca,NY:CornellUniversityPress.(1996). Poetry as performance.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press.Nortier, Jacomine M. (1995). Code switching in MoroccanArabic/Dutch vs. MoroccanArabic/Frenchlanguage contact.InternationalJournal of the Sociology of Language 112:81-95.Rabin,Jaim(n.d.). Breve historia de la lengua hebrea.Jerusalem:O.S.M.Riafno,Ana (1993). La lengua sefardfy su evoluci6n. In Ribera1993, 83-105.Ribera, Josep (1993), ed. Actes del Simposi Internacionalsobre CulturaSefardita.Barcelona: Fa-cultat de Filologia.Riera, Jaume (1974), ed. Cants de noces delsjueus catalans. Barcelona:Curial.(1971-75). Un reculld'oracions en cataladels conversos ueus (segle XV). EstudisRomanics16:49-97.Romano,David (1979). Aljama frentea juderfa,call y sus sin6nimos. Sefarad39:347-54.Rosen, HaiimB. (1995). Hebrewat the crossroadsof cultures:FromoutgoingAntiquity o theMiddleAges. OrbisSupplementa.Leuven:Peeters.Sala, Marius(1970). Estudios sobre eljudeoespainolde Bucarest. Mexico City:UNAM.(1998). Die romanischenJudensprachen. n Lexikonder romanistischenLinguistik,vol. 7,372-95. Tubingen:Niemeyer.Sephiha,Haim V. (1974). Problematiquedujudeo-espagnol.Bulletin de la Societe de linguistiquedeParis 69:159-89.(1991). Judeoespaniol: roblematicay terminologfa.Horizonte 1992. In Pierre-LucAbram-son & Martine Berthelot (eds.), L'Espagne contemporaineet les juifs, 163-78. Perpignan:Uni-versite de Perpignan.(1992). Existe-t-il unjudeo-catalancalque? Oui! In Cinqsiecles de viejuive a Ge'rone,137-46. Paris: EditionsHispaniques.Stern,Samuel M. (1948). Les vers finaux enespagnol dans les muwassahshispano-hebraiques:Unecontributiona l'histoire de la muwassah et a l'etude du vieux dialecte espagnol 'mozarabe'.Al-Andalus 13:299-346.(1949). Un Muwassah arabeavec terminaisonespagnole.Al-Andalus 14:214-18.Weinreich,Uriel (1953 [1970]). Languagesin contact. The Hague: Mouton.; Labov,William;& Herzog, Marvin(1968

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Code Switching Among Medieval Catalan Jews