Understanding Language Contact offers an accessible and empirically grounded introduction to contact linguistics. Rather than taking a traditional focus on the outcomes of language contact, this book takes the novel approach of considering these outcomes as an endpoint of bilingualism and multilingualism. Covering speech production and comprehension, language diffusion across different interactional networks and timeframes, and the historical outcomes of contact-induced language change, this book:

Written by three experienced teachers and researchers in this area, Understanding Language Contact is key reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students approaching bilingualism and language contact for the first time.