Contact has always been a normal part of the development of languages, from those of ancient empires, those of colonial expansion, and to those of our globalizing planet today. Pidgin and creole studies have merged with the study of other language contact phenomena (adult second-language acquisition, bilingualism, bilingual mixed languages, language shift, partially restructured languages, language attrition, etc.) to form the flourishing field of contact linguistics.

This new Routledge Major Work brings together the most important contributions advancing our understanding of...