The Handbook of Language Contact offers systematic coverage of the major issues in this field - ranging from the value of contact explanations in linguistics, to the impact of immigration, to dialectology - combining new research from a team of globally renowned scholars, with case studies of numerous languages.

• An authoritative reference work exploring the major issues in the field of language contact: the study of how language changes when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact
• Brings together 40 specially-commissioned essays by an international team of scholars
• Examines language contact in societies which have significant immigration populations, and includes a fascinating cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world
• Accessibly structured into sections exploring the place of contact studies within linguistics as a whole; the value of contact studies for research into language change; and language contact in the context of work on language and society
• Explores a broad range of topics, making it an excellent resource for both faculty and students across a variety of fields within linguistics

About the Author
Raymond Hickey is Professor of Linguistics at Essen University, Germany. His main areas of research are varieties of English (especially Irish English) and general questions of language contact, shift, and change as well as computer corpus processing. He has published widely, the most recent titles being A Sound Atlas of Irish English (2004), Legacies of Colonial English (2004), Dublin English: Evolution and Change (2005), Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms (2007), and Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change (2010).

Reviews

"This volume represents a welcome addition to the literature on language contact, assembling contributions from international experts to offer an extensive resource which encompasses a broad range of language contact research." (The Linguist List, 12 April 2014)

Book Information
ISBN 9781118347157
Author Raymond Hickey
Format Paperback
Page Count 896
Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 1325g
Dimensions(mm) 246mm * 173mm * 41mm