Language Contact

Revised edition of a seminal introduction to language contact, providing an overview of the field and its most recent developments.

Combining the author's research with an up-to-date introduction to key concepts, this textbook provides a holistic, original theory of contact linguistics. This second edition has been updated to reflect the many recent developments in this rapidly moving field making it an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in linguistics.Language contact occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence one another. Drawing on the author's own first-hand observations of child and adult bilingualism, this book combines his original research with an up-to-date introduction to key concepts, to provide a holistic, original theory of contact linguistics. Going beyond a descriptive outline of contact phenomena, it introduces a theory of contact-induced language change, linking structural change to motivations in discourse and language processing. Since the first edition was published, the field has rapidly grown, and this fully revised edition covers all of the most recent developments, making it an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students in linguistics.