This book is a collection of twelve articles on diverse language contact situations, preceded by a 66-page general introduction in the first chapter and a two-page preface. The language contact situations discussed range from areas that span an entire continent to smaller borrowing situations between two languages, and include case studies from Australia and North America, two case studies each from Africa, Europe and Asia-Oceania, and four contributions on language contact in South America.

In chapter 1, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald discusses ‘Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective’. Her aim is to give a general introduction to the study of language contact and summarize the findings of the other chapters. Aikhenvald pays special attention to the mechanisms, facilitating factors and effects of language contact, taking into account the wide literature in this field. She emphasizes how language contact is often layered; that is, it can involve several languages, sociolinguistic situations and/or types of contact-induced developments at different times and on various linguistic levels. One of her conclusions is that anything can be borrowed, depending largely on the facilitating factors in the particular contact situation. She further notes that culturally important patterns are generally easily diffusible.

In chapter 2, R. M. W. Dixon looks at ‘Grammatical diffusion in Australia: Free and bound pronouns’. He focuses on two case studies from Australia, involving Wemba-Wemba and the Western Desert languages. Dixon shows how linguistic varieties come to differ as the result of areal contact with other languages. For example, the Western Desert languages range from displaying a full set of bound pronouns in the North to having lost bound pronouns in the South due to the particular contact situations. Stating the principle ‘be as iconic with your neighbour as you can’ (90f.), Dixon detects mutual influences between languages and argues against unidirectionality in contact-induced language change.

In chapter 3, Anne Storch poses the question, ‘How long do linguistic areas last? Western Nilotic grammars in contact’. In the East African region of her focus, contact situations have changed over time due to varying sociolinguistic and geographic parameters, leading to various layers of contact. Her findings are that contact does not make grammars more similar, but that (i) prototypical features of grammar and grammatical structures that function as ‘identity markers’ are stable and not replaced by contact, and (ii) some prototypical structures may spread to other languages. Patterns prone to diffusion are ‘all those features that do not violate emblematic patterns and that can be integrated into the system without altering its most basic structures’ (112).

In chapter 4, ‘Grammars in contact in the Volta Basin (West Africa): On contact-induced grammatical change in Likpe’, Felix K. Ameka considers unilateral borrowing from Ewe into Likpe. In addition to lexical and grammatical structures, Ewe is the source of semantic and cultural scripts that are common to the area. Ameka examines how attitudes can lead to different ‘reactions’ to contact phenomena, such as reorganization and reinterpretation of borrowed forms or outright banning of loans. He concludes that to understand grammatical change fully, one has to take into account multiple perspectives and motivations for borrowing.

In chapter 5, Gerd Jendraschek looks at ‘Basque in contact with Romance languages’, focusing on a number of grammatical structures, such as passive constructions, relative clauses and argument marking. He argues that contemporary purism does not prevent language patterns from becoming more similar. This can, for example, be seen with respect to passives and semantic distinctions in verbs, which follow Romance patterns without outright borrowing of linguistic material. Of particular interest is the change in the sociolinguistic situation over the 2000-year-long contact history of Basque and the linguistic changes related to this.

John Hajek focuses on contact phenomena in a lingua franca in chapter 6, ‘Language contact and convergence in East Timor: The case of Tetun Dili’. He discusses how Tetun Dili displays several layers of contact, including old patterns of areal convergence that involve simplification and newer patterns of grammatical reinforcement and complexification in the light of the language becoming ‘Europeanized’ (177). He shows that the language is not a pidgin, but has become more complex due to Portuguese influence by the addition of new structures rather than the replacement of native forms.

Kate Burridge discusses ‘Language contact and convergence in Pennsylvania German’ in chapter 7. She looks at both English loans in Pennsylvania German and German contact phenomena found in the English spoken by Mennonites. While Pennsylvania German displays a vast amount of influence from English, the English of these speakers shows minimal borrowing at the lexical and grammatical levels but displays a number of phonological loans. Burridge links the types of contact to the acquisition process rather than the dominance of one language, and she relates this to the need to keep the two languages separate.

Victor A. Friedman revisits the Balkan area in chapter 8, ‘Balkanizing the Balkan Sprachbund: A closer look at grammatical permeability and feature distribution’. He investigates the nature of the areality of some typical Balkan features such as future marking and referentiality and argues that convergence can take place at varying speeds. The emblematic status of some structures, as opposed to the negative values associated with others, plays a major role in the diffusion of structures, resulting in what he refers to as ideological changes (217).

In chapter 9, ‘Cantonese grammar in areal perspective’, Stephen Matthews addresses the impact of language contact in the development of contemporary Cantonese. He looks at various layers of contact, including the role played by the linguistic area constituted by mainland South-East Asia and substrate influence from pre-Han. Matthews explains the mechanism of contact as, on the one hand, stemming from language shift and stable bilingualism and, on the other hand, arising from bilingual first language acquisition. He distinguishes between extreme dominance in bilingualism versus balanced bilingualism, arguing that language dominance is a driving factor in the directionality of contact phenomena.

In chapter 10, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald examines the ‘Semantics and pragmatics of grammatical relations in the Vaupés linguistic area’. She focuses on ways in which the Maipurean language Tariana acquired a system of semantically and pragmatically determined marking of grammatical relations through contact with Tucanoan. Aikhenvald addresses the different stages and layers of contact, and argues that the Vaupés language situation was initially a linguistic area with relatively balanced bilingualism and then turned into a contact situation of dominance and displacive contact, resulting in the imposition of Tucano structures on Tariana.

Staying not only in the same geographical region, but within the same linguistic area, Patience Epps looks at ‘The Vaupés melting pot: Tucanoan influence on Hup’ in chapter 11. She shows that Hup belongs to the Vaupés area and underwent mechanisms of change that parallel those in other languages of the region, even though the Hup people do not share the linguistic exogamy practised by their neighbours. While Tucanoan has dominance over Hup, Epps argues that contact has not led to language loss but to the enrichment of the Hup language.

Willem F. H. Adelaar discusses ‘The Quechua impact in Amuesha, an Arawak language of the Peruvian Amazon’ in chapter 12. He aims to shed light on the linguistic history of this language, combining the historical method with contact theory. Adelaar finds several layers of contact involving different dialects of Quechua as well as other unidentified languages. While there is extensive lexical borrowing from various sources, there is less impact on the grammar, which retains its Arawak features. Adelaar hypothesizes that this is due to a balanced contact situation rather than a situation in which one language was clearly dominant. However, the exact contact profile and genetic history of Amuesha remain unclear.

In the final chapter of the book, ‘Feeling the need: The borrowing of Cariban functional categories into Mawayana (Arawak)’, Eithne B. Carlin discusses a contact situation leading to language endangerment and death. Mawayana has undergone significant structural changes due to Cariban influence, in particular by acquiring categories that are obligatory in Cariban and losing categories that do not exist in the source language. There are many layers of borrowing, due to the complicated patterns of multilingualism in the region.

The book's appendices provide a useful ‘Glossary of terms’ as well as an ‘Author index’, an ‘Index of languages, language families, and linguistic areas’ and a ‘Subject index’.

This book is a very valuable addition to research in contact linguistics, providing an overview of different types of language contact in areas from all over the world. One of its strengths is the diversity of the contact situations that are discussed, which range from major areas to minor case studies. One of the shortcomings of the volume is that it does not provide a systematic comparison of the conclusions from the different chapters, although this appears to be promised by the following statement in the preface:

The inclusion of general principles of contact-induced change would have made the book even more useful. Aikhenvald points out that it can be difficult to compare contact situations and suggests separating out facilitating factors rather than formulating overall borrowing hierarchies. This deconstructionist approach results in the identification of many relevant factors but makes only a few generalizations about the mechanisms of language contact. Some of the facilitating factors could be grouped together. For example, factor 7, ‘the existence of a perceivable “gap” facilitates diffusion’ (30), and factor 4, ‘frequency: the more frequent the category in one language, the likelier it is to diffuse into another’ (29), could be summarized as ‘when a structure is frequent in one language but does not exist in the other, it may be borrowed’, since ‘gaps’ should be understood to be relative to the structures found in the surrounding languages.

Similarly, the distinction made in the case studies between the borrowing of forms and of patterns could have been explored further, as they have been in other recent studies that are based on samples of contact situations (see Sakel Reference Sakel, Matras and Sakel2007), in particular with regard to the direction of borrowing between languages. More could have been said about the borrowability of features, rather than taking an ‘anything goes’ approach. For example, Matras (Reference Matras, Matras and Sakel2007) has shown a wide variety of minor borrowing hierarchies, taking into account many of the factors mentioned by Aikhenvald.

Likewise, some of the claims in the individual chapters would be worth addressing in a wider context, such as Storch's comment that identity markers in the languages of her case study do not undergo diffusion even in situations of dominance, and Burridge's conclusion that acquisition and language domains played a major role in the types of contact phenomena in the English and Pennsylvania German spoken by Mennonites.

A strength of the volume is its focus on ‘layered languages’, where layering can be attributed to both linguistic areas and borrowing situations. This is in line with other current trends in contact linguistics, such as Campbell's (Reference Campbell, Yaron, McMahon and Vincent2006) approach to linguistic areas as multiple borrowing situations.

In conclusion, this book adds to our knowledge of contact situations and makes a contribution to contact linguistics in seeking to establish the mechanisms and factors involved in language contact. I agree with Aikhenvald's comment that in-depth studies of language change and multiple perspectives are needed to gain a holistic understanding of the field of study (53). Grammars in contact provides a good start.