“Be-heš gofte ke da’fe-ye dige fuska koni bebin če kāret mikonam.” : Code-switching among Persian-speaking Youths in Sweden

Sammanfattning: The purpose of the present study is to investigate code-switching at a structural level among youths in Sweden speaking Persian. According to the theoretical framework of this essay code-switching occurs at certain places in sentences and follow certain grammatical rules. The aim of the conducted study is to demonstrate if there are word classes between which code-switches occur more frequently, whether or not it is possible to find out certain verbs that are borrowed from Swedish to Persian more often than others and if Persian compound verbs are often constructed with a Swedish main verb and the Persian light verb kardan. Eight students participated in the investigation and the ages of the participants varied from sixteen to nineteen years. The methods used consist of recorded interviews and elicitations and took place during a native language class. The result clearly showed that the most common word class from which switches from Swedishto Persian occurs is nouns. Among the verbs, the vast majority were compound verbs, constructed with a Swedish main verb and the Persian light verb kardan. Other light verbs used were raftan and xordan, however, these were only used one time each, implying that kardan is without doubtthe most common light verb used when building a Persian compound verb with a Swedish main verb. The present study does not indicate certain simple verbs used more often than others, on the contrary, it seems possible to choose almost any Swedish main verb in infinitive, or even a Swedish compound verb, and put it together with the Persian light verb kardan to form a Swedish/Persian compound verb.