Psycholinguistics & Language Acquisition, Social Sciences - General & Miscellaneous

Language Contact

Name: Language Contact
Author: Yaron Matras
ISBN: 9780511699542

by Yaron Matras

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Overview

Most societies in today's world are multilingual. 'Language contact' occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence each other. This book is an introduction to the subject, covering individual and societal multilingualism, the acquisition of two or more languages from birth, second language acquisition in adulthood, language change, linguistic typology, language processing and the structure of the language faculty. It explains the effects of multilingualism on society and language policy, as well as the consequences that long-term bilingualism within communities can have for the structure of languages. Drawing on the author's own first-hand observations of child and adult bilingualism, the book provides a clear analysis of such phenomena as language convergence, grammatical borrowing, and mixed languages.

About the Author, Yaron Matras

Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester. His research interests include the interface of linguistic typology, discourse pragmatics and language processing, and language change, as well as multilingualism and dialects. He has published widely on the linguistics of Romani (including Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2002), and on language contact.