We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The chapter re-positions the study of contact-induced language change in the context of the individual user’s management of a complex repertoire of linguistic structures. Taking as a point of departure the assumption that for multilinguals, boundaries among “languages” are permeable and subject to users’ creativity, I draw links between structural outcomes of contact and the inherent functions that structural categories have in information processing in communication. Topics covered include code-switching, lexical borrowing, functional and grammatical borrowing, and convergence and contact-induced grammaticalization. I examine proposed hierarchies of borrowability in lexicon and grammar, and revisit the notion of “constraints” on borrowing. I argue in favour of an epistemology that identifies trends as worthy of attention even if isolated exceptions exist; and which seeks to derive explanatory models from such cross-linguistic trends. I conclude that the study of structural outcomes of language contact can contribute to a better understanding of the language faculty itself, and possibly even of key aspects of the evolution of human language.
The chapter outlines standardization efforts in Romani, where geographical dispersion and the absence of strong community institutions pose challenges to efforts towards unification, status regulation and domain expansion. Initial standardization efforts were localized and partly state sponsored, while others were promoted by networks of activists and supported by civil society initiatives as well as by European governance institutions. Transnational mobility since the mid-1990s, the expansion of electronic communication and the proliferation of both political networking and religious missionary activities among Romani communities have provided incentives and means for domain expansion. Romani literacy is characterized by the use of multiple variants in the choice of dialect and orthography. I show how the key features of ‘standardization beyond the state’, such as the role of networking among multiple actors and pluralism of form, are reinforced through the growing role of multinational institutions, increased mobility and the rise of electronic communication.
Language contact occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence one another. Drawing on the author's own first-hand observations of child and adult bilingualism, this book combines his original research with an up-to-date introduction to key concepts, to provide a holistic, original theory of contact linguistics. Going beyond a descriptive outline of contact phenomena, it introduces a theory of contact-induced language change, linking structural change to motivations in discourse and language processing. Since the first edition was published, the field has rapidly grown, and this fully revised edition covers all of the most recent developments, making it an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students in linguistics.