Bilingualism is the ability of individuals to converse in two languages. Two effects of bilingualism are the language contact phenomena of code-mixing (CM) and code-switching (CS). Through this study, we aim to provide a comprehensive account of the constraint-based structural analysis of CM and CS in the spoken discourse of Parsi Gujarati (PG), a variety spoken by the Parsi community in India.

This study focuses on two main objectives: an empirical analysis of four linguistic constraints, in addition to providing a characterisation of the structural factors of CM and CS, as well as an identification of units of the English grammatical system that are integrated into the grammar of PG. The MLF model has been adopted for the analysis within the Interactional Linguistics framework. It is observed that only the size-of-constituent constraint conforms to the PG data, whereas the determiner constraint, the complementizer constraint and the conjunction constraint are violated by the same to a higher degree than adhering to them. Widespread borrowing of English loan words in PG discourse is also observed. This research is an attempt to carry out a thorough investigation of CM and CS within Parsi Gujarati, since code alternation is extremely frequent in this language variety.