Language Contact and Grammatical Change [Paperback]

Offers an interesting insight into how language contact affects grammatical forms and structures.The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists in recent years. This pioneering new study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers interesting new insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists in recent years. This pioneering new study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers interesting new insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists in recent years. This pioneering new study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. The book will be of great interest to all working in grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.List of maps; List of tables; Series editor's foreword; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. The framework; 2. On replicating use patterns; 3. Grammaticalization; 4. Typological change; 5. On linguisticl3a