Contact ─ The Interaction of Closely Related Linguistic Varieties and the History of English

Much has been written on dialect formation through contact between dialects of the same language, but the question of what happens when closely related but linguistically discrete varieties come into contact with each other has largely been neglected.

Here Robert McColl Millar sets out to redress this imbalance, giving the reader the opportunity to analyse and consider a variety of different contact scenarios where the language varieties involved are close relatives and to explore the question: are the results of contacts of this type different by their nature from where linguistically distant (or entirely different) varieties come into contact?

Bringing together the diverse theoretical positions associated with the production of new dialects as well as those associated with contact between closely related but discrete language varieties, the volume invites the reader to evaluate different scholarly views using analysis from a range of different case-studies, largely derived from the history and diversity of English. It then goes on to demonstrate the similarities in process and end result between contact involving discrete but closely related languages and between dialects of the same language, and in doing so offers a new and insightful approach to issues of language contact.

Robert McColl Millar is Reader in Linguistics in the School of Language & Literature at the University of Aberdeen. His books include Northern and Insular Scots (2007), Authority and Identity. A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age (2010) and English Historical Sociolinguistics (2012).