Despite increasing attention to bilingualism--conferences, publications, grants--linguists are as far as ever from reaching consensus. Is code-switching the alternation between two equally activated languages or is it the insertion of elements from a source language into a recipient language? Can and should we distinguish borrowing and…

"Ouh que c'est laid!" "Oh this is ugly!" is one of the comments among the 11,800 hits on Google for the sequence "la fille que je sors avec" [the girl I go out with]. Often the comments include the idea that the whole expression has been taken from English as a direct calque. The authors of the present keynote…

Jurgen Meisel's (JM) article is literally thought-provoking, especially for the issues that one can raise out of the central position that he develops, viz., "although bilingual acquisition in situations of language contact can be argued to be of significant importance for explanations of grammatical change, reanalysis affecting parameter settings…

Prepositions can be found with and without adjacent complements in many forms of popular spoken French. The alternation appears in main clauses ("il veut pas payer pour ca [approximately] il veut pas payer pour" "he doesn't want to pay for [it]") and, though with a more restricted social and geographic distribution, in relative…

In their keynote contribution, Poplack, Zentz & Dion (henceforth PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) propose an interesting "scientific test of convergence" (under section heading: "Introduction") which contains criteria to check whether a particular feature in a given language in contact with another one is…

The authors of "Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence", Poplack, Zentz & Dion (2011, this issue), henceforth cited as PZD, make a strong case for showing that, in spite of surface similarities, preposition stranding in Canadian French relative clauses…

The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, 1953; Lefebvre, 1985; Prince, 1988; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; King, 2000; Sankoff, 2002; Labov, 2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages,…

The five papers in this issue cover a range of perspectives on the acquisition and use of the Spanish copulas "ser" and "estar" in a variety of contexts, including language contact, bilingual language acquisition, and classroom second language learning. The fact that these papers cite work in this area as far back as the early part of the 20th…

Discusses a previous article on linguistic borrowing in the French language and argues that the metaphor "borrowing" (with its linguistic equivalents in French and German) is approximate. Suggests because the family tree model has been discredited as has the notion of a standard language, borrowings are merely the "tip of the iceberg" in the…

Gives some examples of linguistic borrowing in translatin Quebec statutes from French to English. (AM)

Many languages use vast numbers of words borrowed from English, and modified (clipped) to use the first part of the word only. The paper provides examples, mainly from Italian, examining the linguistic reasons for such clipped forms and presents several clipped Italian terms used in English, noting that the same thing can happen in reverse. (SMN)

Establishes a chronology of borrowings by the French language, and suggests that the classification and typography of these borrowings are problems that merit attention. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the etymological routes, the borrowing process, that allows words from language B to enter language A. Uses metaphorical language to describe the ways in which words are taken from one language and used in another. (Author/VWL)

Explores markedness of languages and language change in relation to their roles in the consistency of language. Concludes typology provides no explanations in itself, but rather through data which need explanations and form a testing ground for linguistic theories. (Author/BK)

Traces history of Aztec language and culture to show how traces remain in modern Spanish and how they have contributed to other languages. (BK)