The papers in this volume describe a wide variety of language contact settings in which one or more languages are in a process of shift. In the first part of the book theoretical perspectives are presented, followed by linguistic, sociological and descriptive studies of languages and countries that have attracted the interest of researchers before, as well as less well known examples. Data are presented from: the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Israel, The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Morocco, Finland, Malaysia, Germany, USA, Ireland, India, Tanzania and Australia.

This updated and revised edition of Hamers and Blanc's successful textbook presents state-of-the-art knowledge about languages in contact from individual bilingualism (or bilinguality) to societal bilingualism. It is both multi- and interdisciplinary in approach, and analyses bilingualism at individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural aspects of bilingual development are explored, as are problems such as bilingual memory and polyglot aphasia. Hamers and Blanc analyse the relationship between culture, identity, and language behaviour in multicultural settings, as well as the communication strategies in interpersonal and intergroup relations. They also propose theoretical models of language processing and development, which are then applied to bilingual behaviour. Other topics reviewed include language shift, pidgins and creoles, language planning and bilingual education. This book will be invaluable to students, teachers and scholars interested in languages in contact in a range of disciplines including psycholinguistics, linguistics, the social sciences, education and language planning.

Today, the notion of 'diglossia' occupies a prominent place in sociolinguistic research. Since the 1960s, when the dominant sense of 'diglossia' was the complementary sociofunctional distribution of two varieties of the same language, the term has been applied -- often controversially -- to a growing number of diverse sociolinguistic situations. As a consequence of this extension of the scope of the concept, in combination with an increasing interest in the relationship between the role of language and the social structure, the number of publications in this field has risen exponentially over the last decades. However, despite the growing importance of the notion, up till now there was no adequate bibliography devoted to diglossia, while coverage in other bibliographies does not do justice to the number of works actually published in this area. This first comprehensive bibliography of the subject includes almost 3,000 entries; although the time span covered is 1960-1990, the book includes several dozens of entries from before 1960 and also a substantial number of very recent publications from the period 1990-1992. The selection of items has not been restricted to a specific definition of diglossia: all available publications in which the term (or one of its offsprings) appears have been included; moreover, when considered appropriate, some material relevant to the subject has been added even though the term is not explicitly used. The usefulness of the bibliography has been enhanced significantly by six indexes: (1) index of languages, (2) diglossia in literature, (3) historically oriented works, (4) pedagogically oriented works, (5) theoretical works, and (6) theses and dissertations.

This book offers readers a new way of thinking about the unique syntactic, semantic and phonological structure of Singapore English.