Diversity in Contact

The impact of the colonial languages Polish and German on the structures of the written varieties of Latvian is surveyed and compared. The opposite case – the impact of indigenous languages of Nigeria and Ghana on the colonial language English – is scrutinized from the perspective of the nexus of language and culture. Language contact in a diasporic context is examined in the case study on Jordanian Chechen. The effects of language contact on the lexicon and grammar of Basque are analyzed. In the in-depth study on Maltese adpositions, the influence of the contact language Italian is a central theme. The morphosyntax of place names is analyzed for the contact languages which typically arise in colonial contexts – Pidgins and Creoles. In the typological study dealing with areal phonology, languages of Europe are investigated revealing that the role of language contact is crucial for the distribution of phonological phenomena.

The novel nature and new strands of research in the contributions call for further investigations and form a new component in language-contact theory.