This course will focus on the linguistic and social phenomena
surrounding language contact. We will examine the typology of
contact situations and a broad range of phenomena including language
maintenance, shift and death; diglossia; koineization; pidginization
and creolization; language intertwining or the creation of mixed
languages such as Michif, Ma’a, and Media Lengua; Sprachbunds and
language areas; codeswitching, lexical borrowing, and grammatical
borrowing including calquing and replication. We will also examine
some of the basic findings on bilingualism: definitions, typologies
of bilingualism, issues of bilingualism and the human brain, and
issues of bilingual or multilingual speech communities.