The contributions of this volume offer both a diachronic and synchronic approach to aspects relating to different areas of colonial life as for example colonial place-naming in a comparative perspective. They comprise topics of diverse interests within the field of language and colonialism and represent the linguistic fields of sociolinguistics, onomastics, historical linguistics, language contact, obsolescence convergence and divergence, (colonial) discourse, lexicography and creolistics.

In the Americas, both indigenous and postcolonial languages today bear witness of massive changes that have taken place since the colonial era. However, a unified approach to languages from different colonial areas is still missing. The present volume studies postcolonial varieties that emerged due to changing linguistic and sociolinguistic conditions in different settings across the Americas. The studies cover indigenous languages that are undergoing lexical and grammatical change due to the presence of colonial languages and the emergence of new dialects and creoles due to contact. The...