Language Contact: An Introduction

This book surveys situations in which language contact arises and focuses on what happens to the languages themselves: sometimes nothing, sometimes the incorporation of new words, sometimes the spread of new sounds and sentence structures across many languages and wide swathes of territory. It outli...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author Thomason, Sarah G
Format Book
LanguageEnglish
Published Georgetown University Press 2001
Subjects
Bilingualism
Code Switching (Language)
Creoles
Heritage Education
Language Attitudes
Language Change
Language Contact
Language Planning
Linguistics
Multilingualism
Official Languages
Pidgins
Public Policy
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Summary:This book surveys situations in which language contact arises and focuses on what happens to the languages themselves: sometimes nothing, sometimes the incorporation of new words, sometimes the spread of new sounds and sentence structures across many languages and wide swathes of territory. It outlines the origins and results of contact-induced language change, extreme language mixture--which can produce creoles, pidgins, and bilingual mixed languages--and language death. The book concludes with a brief survey of language endangerment. It is divided into 10 chapters with the following titles: "Contact Onsets and Stability"; "Multilingualism in Nations and Individuals"; "Contact-Induced Language Change: Results"; "Linguistic Areas"; "Contact-Induced Language Change: Mechanisms";"Contact Languages I: Pidgins and Creoles"; "Contact Languages II: Other Mixed Languages"; "Language Death"; "Endangered Languages." Several appendices are included: "A Map of Some Contact Situations Around the World,""Official Languages in the World's Nations," a glossary, and subject and names indexes. (Contains 362 references.) (KFT)
ISBN:9780878408542
0878408541