Morphosyntactic Convergence Versus Pragmatic Divergence: A Cross-Linguistic Evaluation of Code-Switching Constraints in Urban Multilingual Corpora

Abstract

This study investigates the competing theoretical frameworks of morphosyntactic convergence and pragmatic divergence as explanatory models for code-switching behaviour in urban multilingual communities. Drawing on a curated corpus of 1.2 million tokens collected across four metropolitan speech communities in Western Europe and Southeast Asia, we apply Optimality-Theoretic constraint ranking alongside Conversation Analysis protocols to evaluate the predictive validity of each approach. Quantitative corpus interrogation was supplemented by sociolinguistic interviews and discourse-completion tasks. Findings indicate that morphosyntactic convergence accounts adequately for intra-sentential switching patterns, while pragmatic divergence more robustly explains interactional alignment phenomena. Neither framework in isolation achieves comprehensive explanatory coverage, suggesting that an integrated, constraint-interaction model is required for empirically grounded analyses of contemporary multilingual discourse.