Mayeux’s chapter offers a new perspective on the notion of decreolisation which is also a possible path in the life cycle of a Creole language. Creoles in contact with their lexifiers are famously supposed to undergo decreolisation, a process Bickerton termed a “special case” (1980: 113) of contact-induced change. The proposition that Creoles undergo a “special” process of language change has been roundly critiqued by several scholars, not least because decreolisation has seldom been strictly defined or tested with diachronic data. Bickerton, however, sought a rigorous definition for what he critiqued as a “tinkertoy concept” (1980: 111), arguably providing the only specific model of the structural mechanisms supposedly underlying that process. This chapter takes earnestly his suggestion that linguists should strictly define and test the diachronic mechanisms shaping decreolisation. In so doing, this chapter presents evidence against his Creole-specific approach to language change which treats decreolisation as a “special case”.

After a long tradition of studying languages as isolated systems, researchers are increasingly aware of the fact that speakers of most of the world’s languages are multilingual. The coexistence of multiple languages within the brain can be a significant force shaping each. The recognition of constructions and their arrays of constructional properties provides a useful tool for understanding contact phenomena: much of what is transferred in contact situations are constructions or constructional features. Conversely, examination of what is replicated can enhance our understanding of the nature of linguistic knowledge. Here replicated constructions of varying sizes and degrees of schematicity are first described, from words through discourse structures, then the transfer of individual constructional features, including prosody, special connotations, various pragmatic effects, linguistic and extralinguistic contexts of use, and frequency are discussed, as well as the social situations under which they occur. The kinds of constructions and constructional properties replicated provide additional evidence that constructions are more than simple combinations of basic form and meaning.

Researchers in bilingualism seek to identify factors that are associated with specific features of bilingual speech. One such predictive factor is language dominance, typically understood as the degree to which one of the languages of a bilingual is more often and more proficiently used. In this chapter we review landmark studies that demonstrate the power of language dominance in predicting fine-grained phonetic and phonological characteristics of speech production and on the perceptual and processing abilities in one or both languages of bilinguals. We then critically examine the construct of dominance and identify ways that dominance can be and has been measured, as well as challenges inherent in the measurement of dominance. We follow demonstrating the dynamic character of dominance by reviewing research on dominance switches and shifts. This is followed by a review of extant studies on language dominance in bilingual speech production, perception, and processing in both languages. We conclude with four areas where research can be fruitfully directed.

This chapter introduces chief postulates common to usage-based (UB) approaches to language. The UB approach maintains that speakers’ experiences with language shape how language is stored. Experiences with specific words and word combinations in particular linguistic, discursive, and social contexts accrue in memory and subsequently contribute to patterns of variability evident in speech productions. Usage-based approaches regularly consider independent effects on lexical representations of decontextualized prior probabilities (e.g. phone/word/bigram frequencies, type frequencies), and, increasingly, contextually informed counts (e.g. lexical items’ cumulative exposure to conditioning effects of the production contexts, phone/word probabilities) are considered. This chapter offers an overview of studies exploring the connection between usage patterns and bilingual sound systems as well as studies exploring evidence of interlingual influence arising from bilingual lexical storage (schematic ties in memory). The chapter suggests potential avenues for future UB research into bilingual phonetics and phonology.

This chapter examines the conceptualization and measurement of contact phenomena in the context of bilingualism across various languages. The goal of the chapter is to account for various phonetic contact phenomena in sociolinguistic analysis, as well as providing context for elaborating on quantitative methodologies in sociophonetic contact linguistics. More specifically, the chapter provides a detailed account of global phenomena in modern natural speech contexts, as well as an up-to-date examination of quantitative methods in the field of sociolinguistics. The first section provides a background of theoretical concepts important to the understanding of sociophonetic contact in the formation of sound systems. The following sections focus on several key social factors that play a major part in the sociolinguistic approach to bilingual phonetics and phonology, including language dominance and age of acquisition at the segmental and the suprasegmental levels, as well as topics of language attitudes and perception, and typical quantitative methods used in sociolinguistics.

This chapter begins by outlining the history and development of Yiddish, the traditional vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, and it discusses how Yiddish went from being a vibrant language spoken by millions to being an endangered minority language with only a fraction of its original speaker population – primarily as a result of the Holocaust. The chapter explains how Yiddish came to be spoken in Britain from the 1880s onwards, when large numbers of Ashkenazim fled there to escape poverty and pogroms, and it details the initial tensions and subsequent cooperation between different waves and generations of Yiddish-speaking newcomers (which entailed shifting attitudes towards the Yiddish language). The chapter then provides an overview of the past and current geographical distribution of Yiddish-speaking communities in Britain, with a focus on the main urban centres, and it explores especially London’s thriving Yiddish culture between the two World Wars. This is followed by a discussion of the linguistic consequences of contact between Yiddish and English speakers, and particularly borrowings from each language into the other. Throughout, differences are explained regarding the language use and intergenerational transmission patterns of Yiddish among Haredi as compared to secular communities.

This chapter presents an overview of Multicultural London English (MLE), the urban contact vernacular that has emerged in London in recent years. It starts with a discussion of how similar varieties have been reported across other European cities and have become known as multiethnolects, meaning that they are not restricted to any particular ethnic group but are available to anyone, including speakers from non-immigrant backgrounds. The chapter then focuses on the specific social and historical circumstances that have led to the emergence of MLE, from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present day. After presenting the linguistic characteristics of MLE, a discussion follows of the ways in which MLE has been perceived in the media and by users and non-users of MLE, and how attitudes towards the variety may influence its trajectory in the future. While there is some suggestion that the variety (or some variation thereof) may not be restricted to London, it is not clear whether MLE will stabilise to an everyday vernacular spoken in inner-city neighbourhoods and beyond or whether it will divide along social and ethnic lines. The chapter concludes with a discussion of new research being undertaken to answer some of these issues.

Although the Channel Islands have been united politically with Great Britain since 1204, each of the four largest islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Sark and Alderney, feature Norman dialects, known locally as Jèrriais, Guernésiais, Sercquiais and Aurignais. For many centuries, these were the main everyday languages of most islanders, and Jèrriais and Guernésiais enjoy a literary tradition dating back to the nineteenth century. Owing to the spread of English throughout the archipelago during the twentieth century in particular, the dialects have all suffered a sharp decline in speaker numbers, with the Norman of Alderney now extinct. The insular varieties are not homogeneous and the linguistic consequences, both lexical and structural, of the extensive language contact between English and the three surviving dialects have served to further differentiate insular Norman from the Norman varieties spoken in mainland Normandy. The realisation that insular Norman is declining rapidly in terms of speaker numbers has prompted the establishment of local language planning measures, currently more established in Jersey than on the other islands.

This chapter provides an overview of the early history of the Celtic languages. The first part offers a tour of Britain and Ireland, pausing at key points, both historical and geographical, from which we may consider the development of the Celtic languages. The second part of the chapter then goes on to examine a number of features of the Celtic languages in greater detail: the stress accent, lenition and mutations, the loss of final syllables, and the verbal system.

Couched in socio-economic history, the first chapter provides an overview of the origins and development of the English language in Britain from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Both internal and external factors for language variation and change are considered when discussing the major orthographic, lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic developments. The English language and its development will therefore also be viewed in relation to other languages that were spoken, written or printed in the British Isles over the last 1,500 years. The creation and increasing availability of new data sources (access to hitherto un- or underexplored social layers, text types, regions) during the last decade (e.g. historical corpora like the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and databases like Eighteenth Century Collections Online) have led to many new studies on a range of different linguistic variables. Many of the new findings form the basis of the chapter, which aims to complement traditional histories of English.

With over 6,000 languages spoken worldwide and a history of colonialism and nationalism, people commonly have proficiency in the indigenous language of a region or of a non-localized minority group (ethnic, religious, Deaf, etc.), as well as in a national language. Monolingual or multilingual, dictionaries are products of their sociolinguistic environment. Though dictionaries may be treated by the public as a way to make the language into a static, bounded entity, lexicographers must contend with a lack of clear boundaries as to where their object languages end, given that their language communities include multilingual speakers. Despite this widespread bilingualism, language contact has not been thoroughly treated in English-language literature on lexicography. This chapter synthesizes the different ways that language contact manifests itself through dictionaries. It demonstrates that the asymmetry between the social standing of languages in contact manifests itself in the production and composition of dictionaries. It explores the difficulties that come with establishing the boundaries of the object language, with particular attention to Creoles and signed languages. The chapter details the problems that such difficulties pose to dictionaries of foreignisms. We conclude with an exploration of how language contact can and should inform the future of dictionary creation.

This chapter outlines the linguistic properties of Welsh and its historical and sociolinguistic context. It sketches the main features of Welsh phonology, including vowel, diphthong and consonant phoneme inventories, focusing on issues involving vowel length, the complex set of diphthongs, and voiceless nasal consonants, including major dialect differences. Mutation, changes in word-initial consonants triggered by morphosyntactic features, is a characteristic of Welsh that has drawn considerable attention, and both phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of the phenomenon are discussed. In morphology, topics of interest include extensive regular vowel alternation and the formation of the singular–plural distinction. Mildly synthetic verbal morphology sits alongside another typologically significant property, inflection of prepositions for person and number. Major features of Welsh syntax include head-initial and VSO word order, restrictions on finite verbs in complement clauses, an elaborate system of clause-initial particles, and marking of predicate adjectives and nominals with a dedicated predicative particle. A final section looks at current sociolinguistic issues, including changes in the traditional diglossic relationship between literary and spoken Welsh, and changes that are often attributed to language contact and revitalisation.

This chapter responds to the questions raised in Chapter 1. It reiterates the need for variationist sociolinguistic analysis of heritage languages to increase our understanding of linguistic structures, variation, and change in multilingual contexts. Each variable is considered through the lens of the profiles corresponding to different sources of change. This allows us to consider whether certain profiles are more common for certain types of variables and of language (types), and whether covariation is more prevalent among any subset of variables. We reiterate how these analyses, based on spontaneous speech in an ecologically valid environment, give a picture of heritage language speakers that contrasts with what we have learned from experimental/psycholinguistic studies, highlighting their stability and consistency with homeland varieties in most cases. Suggestions are made for how this approach can be extended to other under-documented, endangered, and smaller languages, along with discussion of benefits of the HLVC methodology to community members, educators and students, and the field of linguistics. The chapter concludes by reporting on students’ positive responses to engagement with the project.

Throughout history, Slavic spread from a fairly restricted area somewhere around Ukraine, Belorussia, and Eastern Poland out to large parts of Europe, and Russian as the most widespread Slavic language today spans almost half of the Northern hemisphere. Historic and present migrations of Slavic speakers and the concomitant geographical expansion of their cultural and political dominions could not fail to afford rich opportunities for language contacts of all kinds, running the gamut from mild to intense forms of language contact, from lexical borrowing, language shift, and group bilingualism to the creation of new, contact-induced languages. Language contacts have been part of the history of Slavic from its very outset, and there is virtually no historical period for which no significant contacts can be identified. One of the tasks of this chapter is to give an idea of the deep historical layering of Slavic language contacts from Proto Slavic up to the present age.