Code-Switching Patterns in the Speech of Altai Kazakh–Khalkha Mongolian Bilinguals

Abstract The Altai Kazakhs settled in the western territories of present-day Mongolia in the middle of the 19th century, and currently about 120,000 of them live across the country. Their language is a special variety of Kazakh that differs from standard Kazakh due to linguistic and social factors. The Altai Kazakh language is currently endangered to varying degrees in different communities across the country, due to bilingualism, language shift, internal migration, and lack of sufficient resources. Intergenerational language transfer is severely undermined, with second generations being bilingual in Altai Kazakh and Khalkha Mongolian and an increasing tendency for third generations to be monolingual in Khalkha Mongolian. Widespread bilingualism and continuous language contact are therefore leading to frequent code-switching phenomena in the speech of Altai Kazakhs. This paper examines code-switching patterns in the speech of Altai Kazakh – Khalkha-Mongolian bilinguals.