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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

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Language Contact and Grammatical Change
  • Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva
  • Published online:
    13 November 2009
    Print publication:
    27 January 2005
  • The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers an interesting insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Drawing on findings from languages all over the world, Language Contact and Grammatical Change shows that the transfer of linguistic material across languages is quite regular and follows universal patterns of grammaticalization - contrary to previous claims that it is a fairly irregular process - and argues that internal and external explanations of language structure and change are in no way mutually exclusive. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.

The Linguistic Legacy of Spanish and Portuguese
  • Colonial Expansion and Language Change
  • J. Clancy Clements
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    26 March 2009
  • The historical spread of Spanish and Portuguese throughout the world provides a rich source of data for linguists studying how languages evolve and change. This volume analyses the development of Portuguese and Spanish from Latin and their subsequent transformation into several non-standard varieties. These varieties include Portuguese- and Spanish-based creoles, Bozal Spanish and Chinese Coolie Spanish in Cuba, Chinese Immigrant Spanish, Andean Spanish, and Barranquenho, a Portuguese variety on the Portugal-Spain border. Clancy Clements demonstrates that grammar formation not only takes place in parent-to-child communication, but also, importantly, in adult-to-adult communication. He argues that cultural identity is also an important factor in language formation and maintenance, especially in the cases of Portuguese, Castilian, and Barranquenho. More generally, the contact varieties of Portuguese and Spanish have been shaped by demographics, by prestige, as well as by linguistic input, general cognitive abilities and limitations, and by the dynamics of speech community.

A Linguistic Geography of Africa
  • Edited by Bernd Heine, Derek Nurse
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007
  • More than forty years ago it was demonstrated that the African continent can be divided into four distinct language families. Research on African languages has accordingly been preoccupied with reconstructing and understanding similarities across these families. This has meant that an interest in other kinds of linguistic relationship, such as whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, has never been the subject of major research. This book shows that such similarities across African languages are more common than is widely believed. It provides a broad perspective on Africa as a linguistic area, as well as an analysis of specific linguistic regions. In order to have a better understanding of African languages, their structures, and their history, more information on these contact-induced relationships is essential to understanding Africa's linguistic geography, and to reconstructing its history and prehistory.

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