"A new Bislama dictionary is a substantially updated version of the first edition, which reflects the ever-changing vocabulary of Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu."--Back cover.

Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar—an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow "simple" and even "deficient."

This is a trilingual dictionary of Vurës, with meanings provided in both English and Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu. Vurës is an Oceanic language spoken on the island of Vanua Lava in Vanuatu. The dictionary is a companion volume to A Grammar of Vurës, Vanuatu (Malau 2016). There is no established tradition of writing in Vurës and most speakers are not literate in their own language. This dictionary is intended to have a dual purpose: to support the learning of literacy skills in the Vurës community, and as a reference work for linguists. There are four parts to the dictionary. The main part is the most comprehensive and provides the English and Bislama definitions of Vurës words, as well as example sentences for many of the entries, additional encyclopaedic information, scientific names for identified species, lexical relations, and etymological information for some entries. The dictionary contains approximately 3,500 headwords and has a strong emphasis on flora and fauna with close to a third of the entries belonging to these semantic domains. The dictionary has benefited from collaboration with a marine biologist and botanists, who have provided scientific identifications for named species. The main dictionary is followed by English–Vurës and Bislama–Vurës finderlists. The final part of the dictionary is a thesaurus, in which Vurës words are grouped according to semantic categories. The thesaurus has been included primarily so that it can be used to support teaching of literacy skills and cultural knowledge within the community.

Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar—an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow "simple" and even "deficient."

This edited volume brings together fourteen original contributions to the on-going debate about what is possible in contact-induced language change. The authors present a number of new vistas on language contact which represent new developments in the field. In the first part of the volume, the focus is on methodology and theory. Thomas Stolz defines the study of Romancisation processes as a very promising laboratory for language-contact oriented research and theoretical work based thereon. The reader is informed about the large scale projects on loanword typology in the contribution by Martin Haspelmath and on contact-induced grammatical change conducted by Jeanette Sakel and Yaron Matras. Christel Stolz reviews processes of gender-assignment to loan nouns in German and German-based varieties. The typology of loan verbs is the topic of the contribution by Søren Wichmann and Jan Wohlgemuth. In the articles by Wolfgang Wildgen and Klaus Zimmermann, two radically new approaches to the theory of language contact are put forward: a dynamic model and a constructivism-based theory, respectively. The second part of the volume is dedicated to more empirically oriented studies which look into language-contact constellations with a Romance donor language and a non-European recipient language. Spanish-Amerindian (Guaraní, Otomí, Quichua) contacts are investigated in the comparative study by Dik Bakker, Jorge Gómez-Rendón and Ewald Hekking. Peter Bakker and Robert A. Papen discuss the influence exerted by French on the indigenous languages ofCanada. The extent of the Portuguese impact on the Amazonian language Kulina is studied by Stefan Dienst. John Holm looks at the validity of the hypothesis that bound morphology normally falls victim to Creolization processes and draws his evidence mainly from Portuguese-based Creoles. For Austronesia, borrowings and calques from French still are an understudied phenomenon. Claire Moyse-Faurie’s contribution to this topic is thus a pioneer’s work. Similarly, Françoise Rose and Odile Renault-Lescure provide us with fresh data on language contact in French Guiana. The final article of this collection by Mauro Tosco demonstrates that the Italianization of languages of the former Italian colonies in East Africa is only weak. This volume provides the reader with new insights on all levels of language-contact related studies. The volume addresses especially a readership that has a strong interest in language contact in general and its repercussions on the phonology, grammar and lexicon of the recipient languages. Experts of Romance language contact, and specialists of Amerindian languages, Afro-Asiatic languages, Austronesian languages and Pidgins and Creoles will find the volume highly valuable.

This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to field linguistics. It deals in particular with the problems arising from the documentation of endangered languages. Terry Crowley shows how to prepare for that task, and how to record, analyse, and describe languages in the filed. Mixing formal instruction and anecdote, the author shares his rich experience with the new generation of linguistic fieldworkers.