Starting in 1498, contact between Ibero-Romance and Asian languages has taken place along a vast stretch of the coastlines of continental and insular Asia, producing a string of contact varieties which are among the least visible in the field of Creole Studies. This volume, the first one dedicated to the Portuguese- and Spanish-lexified creoles of Asia, brings together comparative studies on various issues across the Ibero-Asian creoles and beyond, by specialists in these languages. This type of cross-linguistic analysis allows progress on many fronts, including the reconstruction of past stages of the languages, the explanation of observed similarities and differences, the identification and consolidation of typological/taxonomic clusters, or the assessment of the linguistic effects of different contact equations. The volume provides a timely window onto aspects of current research on the Ibero-Asian creoles, including unsettled debates and ways in which their study can contribute to advance several areas of linguistic enquiry.

This book launches a new approach to creole studies founded on phylogenetic network analysis. Phylogenetic approaches offer new visualisation techniques and insights into the relationships between creoles and non-creoles, creoles and other contact varieties, and between creoles and lexifier languages. With evidence from creole languages in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific, the book provides new perspectives on creole typology, cross-creole comparisons, and creole semantics. The book offers an introduction for newcomers to the fields of creole studies and phylogenetic analysis. Using these methods to analyse a variety of linguistic features, both structural and semantic, the book then turns to explore old and new questions and problems in creole studies. Original case studies explore the differences and similarities between creoles, and propose solutions to the problems of how to classify creoles and how they formed and developed. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the unity and heterogeneity of creoles and the areal influences on their development. It also provides metalinguistic discussions of the “creole” concept from different perspectives. Finally, the book reflects critically on the findings and methods, and sets new agendas for future studies. Creole Studies has been written for a broad readership of scholars and students in the fields of contact linguistics, biolinguistics, sociolinguistics, language typology, and semantics.

Singapore Eurasians: Memories, Hopes and Dreams offers insight into the Singapore Eurasian community, one of Singapore's minority communities. Though small, the Eurasian community has undoubtedly played a big part in Singapore's nation-building. This book is the definitive record of Eurasian history and heritage in Singapore, and serves to educate the younger generation of Eurasians about their roots, the community's achievements and its collective hopes and dreams for the future, as well as provide a useful resource for others to learn more about the Eurasian community.In addition, Singapore Eurasians: Memories, Hopes and Dreams also covers the growth and developments of the Eurasian community within the last 25 years, and how the Eurasian Association (EA), as a Self-Help Group since 1994, has been helping the less fortunate through its programmes, as well as being the main force in driving the preservation and sharing of the Eurasian culture for its future generations.In preserving the history and heritage, as well as expressing the hopes and dreams of the Singapore Eurasian community, this book is an effort in contributing to the country's continued multiracial harmony and appreciation of the many elements that make up Singapore's story.

With nearly a quarter of the world’s population, members of at least five major language families plus several putative language isolates, South Asia is a fascinating arena for linguistic investigations, whether comparative-historical linguistics, studies of language contact and multilingualism, or general linguistic theory. This volume provides a state-of-the-art survey of linguistic research on the languages of South Asia, with contributions by well-known experts. Focus is both on what has been accomplished so far and on what remains unresolved or controversial and hence offers challenges for future research. In addition to covering the languages, their histories, and their genetic classification, as well as phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, and sociolinguistics, the volume provides special coverage of contact and convergence, indigenous South Asian grammatical traditions, applications of modern technology to South Asian languages, and South Asian writing systems. An appendix offers a classified listing of major sources and resources, both digital/online and printed.

This book examines the role of English within education and society in the quickly changing city of Macau. Macau’s multilingual language ecology offers the unique opportunity to examine language planning and policy issues within a small speech community. The languages within the ecology include several Chinese varieties, such as Cantonese, Putonghua and Hokkien, European languages like Portuguese and English, and a number of Asian languages that include, among others, Burmese, Filipino languages, Japanese, Timorese, etc. As the smallest city in South China's Pearl River Delta, Macau has sought to maintain cultural and linguistic independence from its larger neighbours, and independence has been built upon an historic commitment to multilingualism and cultural plurality. As economic development and globalisation offer new opportunities to a growing middle class, the sociolinguistics of a small society constrain and influence the language policies that the territory seeks to implement. Macau's multilingual and pluralistic response to language needs within the territory echoes historical responses to similar challenges and suggests that small communities function sociolinguistically in ways that differ from larger communities.

The Atlas presents commentaries and colour maps showing how 130 linguistic features - phonological, syntactic, morphological, and lexical - are distributed among the world's pidgins and creoles. Designed and written by the world's leading experts, it is a unique resource of outstanding value for linguists of all persuasions throughout the world.

The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.