This volume deals with several types of contact languages: pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, and multi-ethnolects. It also approaches contact languages from two perspectives: an historical linguistic perspective, more specifically from a viewpoint of genealogical linguistics, language descent and linguistic family tree models; and a sociolinguistic perspective, identifying specific social contexts in which contact languages emerge.

This new volume on language contact and contact languages presents cutting-edge research by distinguished scholars in the field as well as by highly talented newcomers. It has two principal aims: to analyze language contact from different perspectives – notably those of language typology, diachronic linguistics, language acquisition and translation studies; and to describe, explain, and elaborate on universal constraints on language contact. The individual chapters offer systematic comparisons of a wealth of contact situations and the book as a whole makes a valuable contribution to deepening our understanding of contact-induced language change. With its broad approach, this work will be welcomed by scholars of many different persuasions.

The appearance of Uriel Weinreich's Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems (1953) marked a milestone in the study of multilingualism and language contact. Yet until now, few linguists have been aware that its main themes were first laid out in Weinreich’s Columbia University doctoral dissertation of 1951, Research Problems in Bilingualism with Special Reference to Switzerland. Based on the author's fieldwork, it contains a detailed report on language contact in Switzerland in the first half of the 20th century, especially along the French-German linguistic border and between German and Romansh in the canton of Grisons (Graubünden). The present edition reproduces Weinreich's original text in full, with only minor alterations and corrections, as well as the author's fieldwork photographs and many of his hand-drawn diagrams. A new foreword reviews Weinreich's life and legacy, as well as developments in contact linguistics and the Swiss linguistic situation over the past 60 years. With selected comments on noteworthy points and references to more recent literature, this volume will be of interest not only to those working on the languages of Switzerland, or specialists in language contact, but all scholars today whose work builds on the broad and lasting foundations laid over half a century ago by Uriel Weinreich.

Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles aims to introduce the reader to the exciting and important field of pidgin and creole studies. The book deals with the linguistic, historical and social aspects of the development of pidgin and creole languages. Detailed case studies of individual pidgins and creoles are based around texts drawn from a range of different types and contexts (mainly contemporary), with discussion and grammatical notes. Chapters are interspersed with exercises to consolidate and develop the reader's understanding.

History, archaeology, and human evolutionary genetics provide us with an increasingly detailed view of the origins and development of the peoples that live in Northwestern Europe. This book aims to restore the key position of historical linguistics in this debate by treating the history of the Germanic languages as a history of its speakers. It focuses on the role that language contact has played in creating the Germanic languages, between the first millennium BC and the crucially important early medieval period. Chapters on the origins of English, German, Dutch, and the Germanic language family as a whole illustrate how the history of the sounds of these languages provide a key that unlocks the secret of their genesis: speakers of Latin, Celtic and Balto-Finnic switched to speaking Germanic and in the process introduced a 'foreign accent' that caught on and spread at the expense of types of Germanic that were not affected by foreign influence. The book is aimed at linguists, historians, archaeologists and anyone who is interested in what languages can tell us about the origins of their speakers.

There is widespread agreement that certain non-Creole language varieties are structurally quite different from the European languages out of which they grew; however, until recently, linguists have found difficulty in accounting for either their genesis or their synchronic structure. This 2003 study argues that the transmission of source languages from native to non-native speakers led to 'partial restructuring', whereby some of the source languages' morphosyntax was retained, but a significant number of substrate and interlanguage features were also introduced. Comparing languages such as African-American English, Afrikaans and Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, John Holm identifies the linguistic processes that lead to partial restructuring, bringing into focus a key span on the continuum of contact-induced language change which has not previously been analysed. Informed by the first systematic comparison of the social and linguistic facts in the development of these languages, this book will be welcomed by students of contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and anthropology.

This volume contains revised and, in some cases, extended versions of twelve of the fourteen lectures read at the conference on “Early Germanic Languages in Contact” held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense on 22-23 August 2013 – with a paper and a review article added at the end on themes pertaining to the aim and scope of the symposium. All papers cover central aspects of the early contact between Germanic and some of its Indo-European and non-Indo-European linguistic neighbours; and, in certain cases, aspects involving internal Germanic language contact.

It is generally agreed that about 7,000 languages are spoken across the world today and at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of this century. This state-of-the-art Handbook examines the reasons behind this dramatic loss of linguistic diversity, why it matters, and what can be done to document and support endangered languages. The volume is relevant not only to researchers in language endangerment, language shift and language death, but to anyone interested in the languages and cultures of the world. It is accessible both to specialists and non-specialists: researchers will find cutting-edge contributions from acknowledged experts in their fields, while students, activists and other interested readers will find a wealth of readable yet thorough and up-to-date information.

This book explores the social and structural dynamics underlying the creation of new, or restructured, grammars, offering an evolutionary account of contact language formation in the linguistic ecology of Monsoon Asia, including contacts between languages and peoples of Malay, Chinese, Portuguese and English origin, before, during and after Western colonization.

This volume provides new insights into various issues on prosody in contact situations, contact referring here to the L2 acquisition process as well as to situations where two language systems may co-exist. A wide array of phenomena are dealt with (prosodic description of linguistic systems in contact situations, analysis of prosodic changes, language development processes, etc.), and the results obtained may give an indication of what is more or less stable in phonological and prosodic systems. In addition, the selected papers clearly show how languages may have influenced or may have been influenced by other language varieties (in multilingual situations where different languages are in constant contact with one another, but also in the process of L2 acquisition). Unlike previous volumes on related topics, which focus in general either on L2 acquisition or on the description and analyses of different varieties of a given language, this volume considers both topics in parallel, allowing comparison and discussion of the results, which may shed new light on more far-reaching theoretical questions such as the role of markedness in prosody and the causes of prosodic changes.