Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.

The former Soviet Union (USSR) provides the ideal territory for studying language contact between one and the same dominant language (Russian) and a wide range of genealogically and typologically diverse languages with varying histories of language contact. This is the first book that bundles different case studies and systematically investigates the impact of Russian at all linguistic levels, from the lexicon to the domains of grammar to discourse, and with varying types of outcomes such as relatively rapid language shift, structural changes in a relatively stable contact situation, pidginization and super variability at the post-pidgin stage. The volume appeals to linguists studying language contact and contact-induced language change from a broad range of perspectives, who want to gain insight into how one of the largest languages in the world influences other smaller languages, but also experts of mostly minority languages in the sphere of the former Soviet Union.

The book provides an encyclopaedic overview of the language contact between Slavic languages and Romani in Eastern, South-Eastern and East-Central Europe. It is based on Yaron Matras’ pragmatic-functional approach to language contact and follows a new direction in Romani linguistics that conceives Romani as a subgroup of closely related languages rather than a single language. The central topics discussed in the book are: Slavic impact on Romani phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax; forms and functions of Slavic verbal prefixes in Romani; Slavic impact on the Romani lexicon; Romani elements in the nonstandard lexicon of the Slavic languages; writing Romani with ‘Slavic’ alphabets.

What happens – sociologically, linguistically, educationally, politically – when more than one language is in regular use in a community? How do speakers handle these languages simultaneously, and what influence does this language contact have on the languages involved? Although most people in the world use more than one language in everyday life, the approach to the study of language has usually been that monolingualism is the norm. The recent interest in bilingualism and language contact has led to a number of new approaches, based on research in communities in many different parts of the world. This book draws together this diverse research, looking at examples from many different situations, to present the topic in any easily accessible form. Language contact is looked at from four distinct perspectives. The authors consider bilingual societies; bilingual speakers; language use in the bilingual community; finally language itself (do languages change when in contact with each other? Can they borrow rules of grammar, or just words? How can new languages emerge from language contact?). The result is a clear, concise synthesis offering a much-needed overview of this lively area of language study.

In South America indigenous languages are extremely diverse. There are over one hundred language families in this region alone. Contributors from around the world explore the history and structure of these languages, combining insights from archaeology and genetics with innovative linguistic analysis. The book aims to uncover regional patterns and potential deeper genealogical relations between the languages. Based on a large-scale database of features from sixty languages, the book analyses major language families such as Tupian and Arawakan, as well as the Quechua/Aymara complex in the Andes, the Isthmo-Colombian region and the Andean foothills. It explores the effects of historical change in different grammatical systems and fills gaps in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) database, where South American languages are underrepresented. An important resource for students and researchers interested in linguistics, anthropology and language evolution.

This volume is an up-to-date, concise introduction to bilingualism and multilingualism in schools, in the workplace, and in international institutions in a globalized world. The authors use a problem-solving approach and ask broad questions about bilingualism and multilingualism in society, including the question of language acquisition versus maintenance of bilingualism. Key features: provides a state-of-the-art description of different areas in the context of multilingualism and multilingual communication presents a critical appraisal of the relevance of the field, offers solutions of everyday language-related problems international handbook with contributions from renown experts in the field

The last few years have seen a steadily increasing interest in constructional approaches to language contact. This volume builds on previous constructionist work, in particular Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG) and the volume Constructions in Contact (2018) and extends its methodology and insights in three major ways. First, it presents new constructional research on a wide range of language contact scenarios including Afrikaans, American Sign Language, English, French, Malayalam, Norwegian, Spanish, Welsh, as well as contact scenarios that involve typologically different languages. Second, it also addresses other types of scenarios that do not fall into the classic language contact category, such as multilingual practices and language acquisition as emerging multilingualism. Third, it aims to integrate constructionist views on language contact and multilingualism with other approaches that focus on structural, social, and cognitive aspects. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar is a framework particularly well suited for analyzing a wide variety of language contact phenomena from a usage-based perspective.