Language Contacts at the Crossroads of Disciplines - Hardcover

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 specialization of related disciplines, their research perspectives, methods and terminology have become dispersed, although language contact phenomena themselves can rarely be confined within the scope of a single discipline. This collection of articles creates dialogue between researchers from different scientific backgrounds, thus viewing language contact phenomena from a broader perspective. When language contact is re-defined to include the mental or cognitive level of contact between different languages and varieties in the minds of language learners or translators, salient links are created between the different disciplines dealing with this subject matter.

Heli Paulasto is University Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). She specializes in English contact linguistics, dialectology and sociolinguistics, and is the author of Welsh English Syntax: Contact and Variation (2006) and co-author of English and Celtic in Contact (2008). Lea Merilainen is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in English Linguistics at UEF. Her work focuses on second language acquisition, cross-linguistic influence, learner corpus research, and the interface between learner English and World Englishes. She is the author of Language Transfer in the Written English of Finnish Students (2010). Helka Riionheimo is University Lecturer of Finnish Language at UEF. Her main academic interests are contact linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and language endangerment and attrition. Her publications include a monograph on the contact of Ingrian Finnish and Estonian (2007) and articles in various journals, such as Studies in Language and Multilingua. Maria Kok is a PhD student in Finnish Language at UEF. Her research interests involve grammaticalization studies, historical syntax of the Finnic languages, the history and ergonomics of grammar traditions, and the teaching of Finnish as a second language.