The HLVC project applies consistent methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation to a range of languages and dependent variables. This is meant to mitigate the pattern of diverse findings from diverse studies that may partially result from diverse methods. This chapter therefore describes how the corpus is constructed, focusing on the cross-linguistic, cross-generational, and multi-method design, and gives details about recruiting, recording, and transcription of the sociolinguistic interview, the ethnic orientation questionnaire, the picture description task, and the consent procedure. It then describes the workflow for data processing and metadata construction, describing both how the corpus is organized (to be useful to additional researchers) and how we have analyzed variation of a number of variables to date. These include prodrop, case-marking, VOT, and (r) across multiple languages, apocope and differential object marking in Italian, and tone mergers, classifiers, motion-even marking, denasalization (an element of so-called lazy pronunciation, 懶音 laan5 jam1), and vowel space in Cantonese. It details the methods of analyzing ethnic orientation and several proxies for fluency (speech rate, vocabulary size, language-switching measures). Finally, it describes the methods used for constructing and comparing mixed-effects models for cross-variety comparisons in order to distinguish contact-induced change, internal change, and identity-marking variation.

Chapter 23 reviews the role of grammaticalization at different levels of grammar: phonological, morpho-syntactic, paradigmatic, and semantic-pragmatic. It first discusses the dischronic principles and mechanisms that have been proposed in previous grammaticalization studies. The chapter then examines the prominent patterns by source category, dividing these into nouns and verbs. In the nominal category, four source construction types are illustrated with the reanalyses that led to their emergence as grammatical forms such as postpositions, conjunctions, and auxiliaries. In the verbal category, four source construction types are illustrated, with special focus on the grammaticalization of de-verbal postpositions and auxiliary verbs. The chapter further addresses select aspects of Korean grammaticalization from a typological perspective. It discusses the productive use of affixes, converbs, and predicatives known as “mermaid constructions”, which are among the characteristics shared by many languages in the eastern Eurasian region. It also discusses the presence of large inventories of de-verbal postpositions and numeral classifiers.

The sociolinguistic situation of the Channel Islands has meant that English has been spoken there alongside the native language, Norman, for several centuries, albeit in a diglossic relationship, with English assuming “High” functions (administration, legislation, education, media, and so forth) and Norman “Low” functions (familiar discourse with family and friends). The fact that, today, all speakers of the three extant varieties of Insular Norman (Jèrriais, Guernesiais, and Sercquiais) are also fluent in English has had far-reaching linguistic consequences in that the Norman spoken in the Channel Islands has diverged from the varieties spoken on the French mainland, and distinctive local varieties of Channel Island English have developed. Based on original data, this chapter provides an overview of the sociolinguistic setting that gave rise to this language contact and discusses some representative examples of contact-induced influence in the lexis, phonology, and morphosyntax of both Channel Island Norman and Channel Island English.

Urban contact dialects emerged in urban settings among locally born young people and can serve as markers of a new, multiethnic urban identity. The chapter brings together instances of such dialects from Europe and Africa, two regions where these phenomena have received a lot of attention from contact-linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. In both settings, local contexts for urban contact dialects are characterised by an openness to multilingual practices. In African contexts, this multilingual perspective is usually also present at the macro level of the larger society; in Europe, the societal context is generally characterized by a more monolingual (and monoethnic) habitus. The comparative perspective adopted here shows that these differences in macro context support different structural and sociolinguistic outcomes, including contact-induced and contact-facilitated change; urban contact dialects taking the form of multilingual mixed languages or new vernaculars of a national majority language; the possible spread of these dialects to become general markers of youth or modernity; and negative public perceptions involving different language-ideological patterns.

This chapter presents an overview of heritage speakers’ linguistic outcomes with the goal of bringing some answers to longstanding debates in contact linguistics. Of special interest are mechanisms of contact-induced change such as convergence and grammaticalization, the role of transfer and priming in those processes, and whether or not these processes lead to simplification or complexification in heritage grammars. Overall, the evidence in the literature favors the argument that syntactic material rarely gets transferred, and that patterns of convergence toward the dominant language are a byproduct of other mechanisms. Contrary to proponents of the theory that social factors take a secondary role in contact-induced grammaticalization, it has also revealed that contact-induced grammaticalization processes in heritage grammars are dependent on the social dynamics of the community. While priming may lead to converge, such effects are also heavily dependent on the social dynamics of the heritage speakers. Results also indicate that patterns of simplification and complexification are intrinsically linked to usage. The discussion makes a call for more work considering intersubjective factors in the study of heritage grammars, in an attempt to better understand the relationship between linguistic systems and social structures.

This chapter analyses the development of over thirty semantic features of South specialisation and re-analysis of words is provided, even where some English words had no endogenous potential to develop in this way. The historical data suggest that the features had propagated considerably by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereas the contemporary data show that these features are more likely to appear in the spoken register. More generally, this chapter argues that even though speakers of Afrikaans and South African English have not experienced any identity alignment in the traditional sense, they have maintained a kind of racial affinity within the historical South African context, which has facilitated deep-rooted, reciprocal influence. The unmistakable role of Afrikaans as activating agent in the grammaticalisation process of these features is emphasised. The findings show that the features are often more than transfers and loan translations.