Kahte hain ki that rupees are the biggest: On complementiser doubling in Hindi-English codeswitching

Codeswitching--switching between languages--is a prominent feature of language in multilingual India.

Sometimes the switch between languages occurs in-between sentences, as in example I (examples I-V adapted from Hock & Joseph[1]:360-1):

(I)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	logoṁ	ko	yah
saying	are	that	nowadays	many	people	to	this

nahīṁ	pasand	hai	ki	rāj	nārāin	pāgal
not	pleasing	is	that	Raj	Narain	crazy

ke samān	aikṭ kar	rahā	hai.
like	act	AUX	is.

But he seems like the same old Raj Narain to me.

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool. But he seems like the same old Raj Narain to me."

But codeswitching can also occur in the middle of a sentence, at the boundary between two clauses, as in example II:

(II)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	logoṁ	ko	yah
saying	are	that	nowadays	many	people	to	this

nahīṁ	pasand	hai	ki	Raj	Narain	is
not	pleasing	is	that

acting

like

a fool...

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

We even find examples of a switch from Hindi to English back to Hindi in a single sentence (again, the switches occur at the clause boundaries), as in example III:

(III)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	nowadays	many	people	don’t
saying	are	that

like	it	ki	rāj	nārāin	pāgal
		that	Raj	Narain	crazy

ke samān	aikṭ kar	rahā	hai...
like	act	AUX	is...

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

Codeswitching in the middle of a clause is much rarer, and codeswitches in the middle of a syntactic constituent, as in example IV, are nearly ungrammatical (as indicated by the '??!' marking):

(IV)??!

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	people	don't	like...
saying	are	that	nowadays	many

??! "They're saying that these days many people don't like..."

Interestingly, however, codeswitching can occur both immediately before and immediately after the clause boundary, so that, for instance, the Hindi complementiser (or subordinator) ki "that" may stand alone in the midst of English words, as in example V (...don't like it ki Raj Narain is...):

(V)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	nowadays	many	people	don’t
saying	are	that

like	it		ki	Raj	Narain	is
			that

acting

like

a fool.

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

What is even more interesting is that it appears to be possible to "double" the complementiser at the point of the codeswitch, so that the complementiser appears once in English (that) and then immediately following in Hindi (ki/ke), as in example VI. This example is taken from the song "Sabse Bada Rupaiya" from the 2005 Hindi film Bluffmaster, starring as male lead Abhishek Bachchan (son of Amitabh Bachchan, the world's most famous actor; and grandson of 'Shadowist' [छायावाद] poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan)--see the video below:

(VI)

Na	bībī,	na	baccā,	na	bāp	baṛā,	na	māiṁyā,
Not	wife,	not	child,	not	father	big,	not	mother,

the	whole	thing	is	that	ke,	bhāiyā,
					that,	brother,

sabse	baṛā	rupayā.
than-all	big	money.

“It’s not your wife, your child, your father, or your mother that’s important—the whole thing is that (that), brother, money’s greater than everything.”

This song is actually a remake of a song from the 1976 Mehmood film "Sabse Bada Rupaiya"; the lyrics of the 1976 version are slightly different, but the line the whole thing is that ke, bhāiyā, sabse baṛā rupayā also occurs there:

[There's some other interesting codeswitches in the old version too.]

The complementiser of Hindi is usually ki /ki/, and the ke /kē/ found in the lyrics cited above seems to be the Urdu form. (This complementiser was actually originally borrowed from Persian ke /ke/; Hindi/Urdu lack the short /e/ vowel found in Persian, and chose to nativise it in different ways: Hindi preserved the vowel length at the expense of the vowel quality [=/ki/], Urdu preserved the vowel quality at the expense of the vowel length [=/kē/].)

In any case, this doubling of the complementiser at the point of the codeswitch (...that ke...) is rather intriguing, though I must admit I'm not exactly sure what it tells us about the syntactic structure of Hindi/Urdu clauses...

For more Hindi-English codeswitching, again from Bluffmaster, here's another video, the Hiphop/Bollywood-fusion song "Right Here, Right Now"--with Abhishek himself as male vocalist.

[you may have to click to close the ads which might appear between 10-15 seconds in to see the subtitles]

There's no complementiser-doubling here, but there are a number of interesting "translations" from Hindi into "hiphop English", e.g. the actress Priyanka Chopra becomes "Piggy Chops" (vaguely reminiscent of rapper names like "Snoop Dogg"). Also is the line "hiphop fakers" or "hiphop fakirs"? (fakir = a Sufi mystic who performs feats of magic)

References:

[1]Hock, Hans Henrich & Brian D. Joseph. 2009. Language history, language change, and language relationship. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2nd edn.