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  3. Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact

Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact is an interdisciplinary series bringing together work on language contact from a diverse range of research areas. The series focuses on key topics in the study of contact between languages or dialects, including the development of pidgins and creoles, language evolution and change, world Englishes, code-switching and code-mixing, bilingualism and second language acquisition, borrowing, interference and convergence phenomena.

  • Founding Editors: Salikoko S. Mufwene, University of Chicago
  • Co-editors: Ana Deumert, University of Cape Town
  • Editorial Boards: Enoch O. Aboh, University of Amsterdam, Michel DeGraff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Victor A. Friedman, University of Chicago, Monica Heller, University of Toronto, Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town, Anne Storch, University of Cologne, Georges-Daniel Véronique, Université Aix-Marseille, Virginia Yip, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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23 results in Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact

Page 1 of 2

Liquid Languages
  • Constructing Languages in Late Modern Cultures of Diffusion
  • Britta Schneider
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • Which ideas about language are prevalent in cultures that are not framed in Western nationalist and literate traditions? How do people conceptualise language if speakers of the same community are multilingual, have access to different language resources and only partially share ideas about what is right and wrong in language? This book explores the 'liquid' properties of language, highlighting how languages, as discursive-material assemblages, can differ in their degree of fixity. It provides a linguistic anthropological study of the language ideologies in Belize, where ethnic belonging and language practice do not necessarily match and where stable language norms are not always considered a value. Scrutinising ethnographic data and examinations of local performances of English, it shows that languages emerge in relation to belonging, prestige and material culture. Bringing to the fore liquid language cultures, it provides important additions to our understanding of late modern language assemblages in a globalising world.

Voices of Immigration
  • A Serial Narrative Ethnography of Language Shift
  • Agnes Weiyun He
  • Published online:
    20 December 2024
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
  • What does immigration do to our languages and identities? What factors contribute to the maintenance or loss of immigrant languages? This book highlights theoretical and typological issues surrounding heritage language development, specifically focusing on Chinese-speaking communities in the USA. Based on a synthesis of observational, interview, reported, and audio/video data, it builds a composite, serial narrative of immigrant language and life. Through the voices of first- and second-generation immigrants, their family members and their teachers, it highlights the translingual practices and transforming interactional routines of heritage language speakers across various stages of life, and the congruencies between narrated perspectives and lived experiences. It shows that language, culture and identity are intricately interwoven, making it essential reading for students and scholars in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Translingual Practices
  • Playfulness and Precariousness
  • Edited by Sender Dovchin, Rhonda Oliver, Li Wei
  • Published online:
    07 May 2024
    Print publication:
    09 May 2024
  • Bringing together work from a team of international scholars, this groundbreaking book explores how language users employ translingualism playfully, while, at the same time, negotiating precarious situations, such as the breaking of social norms and subverting sociolinguistic boundaries. It includes a range of ethnographic studies from around the globe, to provide us with insights into the everyday lives of language users and learners and their lived experiences, and how these interact in translingual practices. A number of mixed methodological frameworks are included to study language users' behaviours, experiences and actions, cover the complexity of language evolutionary processes, and ultimately show that precarity is as fundamental to translingualism as playfulness. It points to a future research direction in which research should be pragmatically applied into real pedagogical actions by revealing the sociolinguistic realities of translingual users, fundamentally addressing broader issues of racism, social injustice, language activism and other human rights issues.

The Lingua Franca
  • Contact-Induced Language Change in the Mediterranean
  • Natalie Operstein
  • Published online:
    25 November 2021
    Print publication:
    02 December 2021
  • Whose name is hidden behind the anonymity of the key publication on Mediterranean Lingua Franca? What linguistic reality does the label 'Lingua Franca' conceal? These and related questions are explored in this new book on an enduringly important topic. The book presents a typologically informed analysis of Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as documented in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque, which provides an important historical snapshot of contact-induced language change. Based on a close study of the Dictionnaire in its historical and linguistic context, the book proposes hypotheses concerning its models, authorship and publication history, and examines the place of the Dictionnaire's Lingua Franca in the structural typological space between Romance languages, on the one hand, and pidgins, on the other. It refines our understanding of the typology of contact outcomes while at the same time opening unexpected new avenues for both linguistic and historical research.

Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, Ellen Hurst-Harosh, Heather Brookes
  • Published online:
    20 August 2021
    Print publication:
    09 September 2021
  • The ways in which young people use language provides fascinating insights into language practice and contact. Written by a team of key scholars in the field, this book describes and theorises 'male, in-group, street-aligned, youth language practice' in urban centres in Africa, exploring the creative use of language, and its function in peer sociality and contestation of social identities. The book contributes to theoretical debates surrounding multimodal language, language contact, standards and variation, and language change. It highlights that 'youth languages' are not to be confused with the urban languages, varieties, and vernaculars of the general population, and that claims of autonomy and candidacy as national languages are flawed. The book demonstrates that the youthful practices of males are nevertheless worthy of scholarly attention: the framing of youth languages within the field of language contact will stimulate situated and comprehensive studies of the role and significance of youth practices.

Language Contact and the Making of an Afro-Hispanic Vernacular
  • Variation and Change in the Colombian Chocó
  • Sandro Sessarego
  • Published online:
    23 August 2019
    Print publication:
    12 September 2019
  • Exploring creole studies from a linguistic, historical, and socio-cultural perspective, this study advances our knowledge of the subject by using a cohesive approach to provide new theoretical insights into language shift, language acquisition and language change. It compares the legal system regulating black slavery in Chocó, Colombia with the systems implemented by other European colonial powers in the Americas, to address questions such as what do Chocó Spanish linguistic features say about the nature of Afro-Hispanic vernaculars? What were the sociohistorical conditions in which Chocó Spanish formed? Was slavery in Chocó much different from slavery in other European colonies? Whilst primarily focused on Afro-Hispanic language varieties, Sessarego's findings and methodology can be easily applied and tested to other contact languages and settings, and used to address current debates on the origin of other black communities in the Americas and the languages they speak.

Linguistic Ecology and Language Contact
  • Edited by Ralph Ludwig, Steve Pagel, Peter Mühlhäusler
  • Published online:
    10 December 2018
    Print publication:
    20 December 2018
  • Contributions from an international team of experts revisit and update the concept of linguistic ecology in order to critically examine current theoretical approaches to language contact. Language is understood as a part of complex socio-historical-cultural systems, and interaction between the different dimensions and levels of these systems is considered to be essential for specific language forms. This book presents a uniform, abstract model of linguistic ecology based on, among other things, two concepts of Edmund Husserl's philosophy (parts and wholes, and foundation). It considers the individual speaker in the specific communication situation to be the essential heuristic basis of linguistic analysis. The chapters present and employ a new, transparent and accessible contact linguistic vocabulary to aid reader comprehension, and explore a wide range of language contact situations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. This book will be fascinating reading for students and researchers across contact linguistics and cultural studies.

Complexity in Language
  • Developmental and Evolutionary Perspectives
  • Edited by Salikoko S. Mufwene, Christophe Coupé, François Pellegrino
  • Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    30 March 2017
  • The question of complexity, as in what makes one language more 'complex' than another, is a long-established topic of debate amongst linguists. Recently, this issue has been complemented with the view that languages are complex adaptive systems, in which emergence and self-organization play major roles. However, few students of the phenomenon have gone beyond the basic assessment of the number of units and rules in a language (what has been characterized as 'bit complexity') or shown some familiarity with the science of complexity. This book reveals how much can be learned by overcoming these limitations, especially by adopting developmental and evolutionary perspectives. The contributors include specialists of language acquisition, evolution and ecology, grammaticization, phonology, and modeling, all of whom approach languages as dynamical, emergent, and adaptive complex systems.

Language Contact in Europe
  • The Periphrastic Perfect through History
  • Bridget Drinka
  • Published online:
    23 February 2017
    Print publication:
    16 February 2017
  • This comprehensive new work provides extensive evidence for the essential role of language contact as a primary trigger for change. Unique in breadth, it traces the spread of the periphrastic perfect across Europe over the last 2,500 years, illustrating at each stage the micro-responses of speakers and communities to macro-historical pressures. Among the key forces claimed to be responsible for normative innovations in both eastern and western Europe is 'roofing' - the superstratal influence of Greek and Latin on languages under the influence of Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism respectively. The author provides a new interpretation of the notion of 'sprachbund', presenting the model of a three-dimensional stratified convergence zone, and applies this model to her analysis of the have and be perfects within the Charlemagne sprachbund. The book also tackles broader theoretical issues, for example, demonstrating that the perfect tense should not be viewed as a universal category.

The Making of Vernacular Singapore English
  • System, Transfer, and Filter
  • Zhiming Bao
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    14 August 2015
  • Singapore English is a focal point across the many subfields of linguistics, as its semantic, syntactic and phonetic/phonological qualities tell us a great deal about what happens when very different types of language come together. Sociolinguists are also interested in the relative status of Singapore English compared to other languages in the country. This book charts the history of Singapore English and explores the linguistic, historical and social factors that have influenced the variety as it is spoken today. It identifies novel grammatical features of the language, discusses their structure and function, and traces their origins to the local languages of Singapore. It places grammatical system and usage at the core of the analysis, and shows that introspective and corpus data are complementary. This study will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on language contact, world varieties of English, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.

The Emergence of Hybrid Grammars
  • Language Contact and Change
  • Enoch Oladé Aboh
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    27 August 2015
  • Children are extremely gifted in acquiring their native languages, but languages nevertheless change over time. Why does this paradox exist? In this study of creole languages, Enoch Oladé Aboh addresses this question, arguing that language acquisition requires contact between different linguistic sub-systems that feed into the hybrid grammars that learners develop. There is no qualitative difference between a child learning their language in a multilingual environment and a child raised in a monolingual environment. In both situations, children learn to master multiple linguistic sub-systems that are in contact and may be combined to produce new variants. These new variants are part of the inputs for subsequent learners. Contributing to the debate on language acquisition and change, Aboh shows that language learning is always imperfect: learners' motivation is not to replicate the target language faithfully but to develop a system close enough to the target that guarantees successful communication and group membership.

Bilingual Language Acquisition
  • Spanish and English in the First Six Years
  • Carmen Silva-Corvalán
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    06 February 2014
  • How do children develop bilingual competence? Do bilingual children develop language in the same way as monolinguals? Set in the context of findings on language development, this book examines the acquisition of English and Spanish by two brothers in the first six years of their lives. Based on in-depth and meticulous analyses of naturalistic data, it explores how the systems of both languages affect each other as the children develop, and how different levels of exposure to each language influence the nature of acquisition. The author demonstrates that the children's grammars and lexicons follow a developmental path similar to that of monolinguals, but that cross-linguistic interactions affecting lexical, semantic and discourse-pragmatic aspects arise in Spanish when exposure to it diminishes around the age of four. The first of its kind, this original study is a must-read for students and researchers in bilingualism, child development, language acquisition and language contact.

Diglossia and Language Contact
  • Language Variation and Change in North Africa
  • Lotfi Sayahi
  • Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
  • This volume provides a detailed analysis of language contact in North Africa and explores the historical presence of the languages used in the region, including the different varieties of Arabic and Berber as well as European languages. Using a wide range of data sets, it provides a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms of language contact under classical diglossia and societal bilingualism, examining multiple cases of oral and written code-switching. It also describes contact-induced lexical and structural change in such situations and discusses the possible appearance of new varieties within the context of diglossia. Examples from past diglossic situations are examined, including the situation in Muslim Spain and the Maltese Islands. An analysis of the current situation of Arabic vernaculars, not only in the Maghreb but also in other Arabic-speaking areas, is also presented. This book will appeal to anyone interested in language contact, the Arabic language, and North Africa.

Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific
  • Maritime Polynesian Pidgin before Pidgin English
  • Emanuel J. Drechsel
  • Published online:
    05 April 2014
    Print publication:
    27 March 2014
  • This volume presents a historical-sociolinguistic description and analysis of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin. It offers linguistic and sociohistorical substantiation for a regional Eastern Polynesian-based pidgin, and challenges conventional Eurocentric assumptions about early colonial contact in the eastern Pacific by arguing that Maritime Polynesian Pidgin preceded the introduction of Pidgin English by as much as a century. Emanuel J. Drechsel not only opens up new methodological avenues for historical-sociolinguistic research in Oceania by a combination of philology and ethnohistory, but also gives greater recognition to Pacific Islanders in early contact between cultures. Students and researchers working on language contact, language typology, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics will want to read this book. It redefines our understanding of how Europeans and Americans interacted with Pacific Islanders in Eastern Polynesia during early encounters and offers an alternative model of language contact.

The Sociolinguistics of Globalization
  • Jan Blommaert
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010
  • Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality.

Contact Languages
  • Ecology and Evolution in Asia
  • Umberto Ansaldo
  • Published online:
    18 January 2010
    Print publication:
    15 October 2009
  • Why do groups of speakers in certain times and places come up with new varieties of languages? What are the social settings that determine whether a mixed language, a pidgin or a Creole will develop, and how can we understand the ways in which different languages contribute to the new grammar? Through the study of Malay contact varieties such as Baba Malay, Cocos Malay and Sri Lanka Malay, as well as the Asian Portuguese vernacular of Macau, and China Coast Pidgin, this book explores the social and structural dynamics that underlie the fascinating phenomenon of the creation of new, or restructured, grammars. It emphasizes the importance and interplay of historical documentation, socio-cultural observation and linguistic analysis in the study of contact languages, offering an evolutionary framework for the study of contact language formation - including pidgins and Creoles - in which historical, socio-cultural and typological observations come together.

The Bilingual Child
  • Early Development and Language Contact
  • Virginia Yip, Stephen Matthews
  • Published online:
    08 January 2010
    Print publication:
    27 August 2007
  • How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the children studied are shown to develop quite differently from monolingual children. The authors demonstrate significant interactions between the children's developing grammars, as well as the important role played by language dominance in their bilingual development. Based on original research and using findings from the largest available multimedia bilingual corpus, the book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in child language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact.

Dynamics of Language Contact
  • English and Immigrant Languages
  • Michael Clyne
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    20 March 2003
  • The past decade has seen an unprecedented growth in the study of language contact, associated partly with the linguistic effects of globalization and increased migration all over the world. Written by a leading expert in the field, this much-needed account brings together disparate findings to examine the dynamics of contact between languages in an immigrant context. Using data from a wide range of languages, including German, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Croatian and Vietnamese, Michael Clyne discusses the dynamics of their contact with English. Clyne analyzes how and why these languages change in an immigration country like Australia, and asks why some languages survive longer than others. The book contains useful comparisons between immigrant vintages, generations, and between bilinguals and trilinguals. An outstanding contribution to the study of language contact, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics, bilingualism, the sociology of language and education.

The Ecology of Language Evolution
  • Salikoko S. Mufwene
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    30 August 2001
  • This major 2001 work explores the development of creoles and other new languages, focusing on the conceptual and methodological issues they raise for genetic linguistics. Written by an internationally renowned linguist, the book discusses the nature and significance of internal and external factors or 'ecologies' that bear on the evolution of a language. The book surveys a wide range of examples of changes in the structure, function and vitality of languages, and suggests that similar ecologies have played the same kinds of roles in all cases of language evolution. Drawing on major theories of language formation, macroecology and population genetics, Mufwene proposes a common approach to the development of creoles and other new languages. The Ecology of Language Evolution will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, creolistics, theoretical linguistics and theories of evolution.

Postcolonial English
  • Varieties around the World
  • Edgar W. Schneider
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    17 May 2007
  • The global spread of English has resulted in the emergence of a diverse range of postcolonial varieties around the world. Postcolonial English provides a clear and original account of the evolution of these varieties, exploring the historical, social and ecological factors that have shaped all levels of their structure. It argues that while these Englishes have developed new and unique properties which differ greatly from one location to another, their spread and diversification can in fact be explained by a single underlying process, which builds upon the constant relationships and communication needs of the colonizers, the colonized, and other parties. Outlining the stages and characteristics of this process, it applies them in detail to English in sixteen different countries across all continents as well as, in a separate chapter, to a history of American English. Of key interest to sociolinguists, dialectologists, historical linguists and syntacticians alike, this book provides a fascinating new picture of the growth and evolution of English around the globe.

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