This book provides the first comprehensive account of the history and extent of Celtic influences in English. Drawing on both original research and existing work, it covers both the earliest medieval contacts and their linguistic effects and the reflexes of later, early modern and modern contacts, especially various regional varieties of English.

In this book, contributors have been brought together to discuss the role of two major factors shaping the grammars of different varieties of English (and of other languages) all over the world: so-called vernacular universals and contact-induced change. Rather than assuming a general typological perspective, the studies in this volume focus on putative universal vernacular features - significant phonological or (morpho-) syntactic parallels found in non-standard varieties of English, English-based Creoles, and also varieties of other languages, all of which represent widely differing...

This volume offers a cross-disciplinary insight into language contact research, bringing together fresh empirical and theoretical studies from various fields concerning different dimensions of language contact and variation, second language acquisition and translation. In the present-day world of globalization, population mobility and information technology, the themes of multilingualism and contact-induced language change are as topical as ever, and research on language contacts and cross-linguistic influence has expanded rapidly during the last few decades. Along with the increasing...