Contact Languages, v. 1 (Hardcover)

Contact has always been a normal part of the development of languages, from those of ancient empires, those of colonial expansion, and to those of our globalizing planet today. Pidgin and creole studies have merged with the study of other language contact phenomena (adult second-language acquisition, bilingualism, bilingual mixed languages, language shift, partially restructured languages, language attrition, etc.) to form the flourishing field of contact linguistics.This new Routledge Major Work brings together the most important contributions advancing our understanding of language contact phenomena. Its five volumes cover almost two hundred years of scholarship and provide researchers and students with an overview of how insights about the new languages that emerged as a result of European expansion to Africa, Asia, the New World and the Pacific have led to a clearer view of what language is.