The Early Years of Language Contact: Introduction

This special issue of the Journal of Language Contact contains six articles examining the early years of language contact in locations where a contact variety emerged. ... The main reason for looking closely at the early years of language contact is to examine the notion that the sociolinguistic conditions in this period had a crucial and disproportionate influence on the contact language that later emerged. Another objective is to investigate the assumption that significant differences existed between conditions in the early years and those later on. Before discussing these objectives, however, we outline some overarching epistemological problems (defining the "early years" of language contact and finding linguistic sources that are reliable) and some solutions (taking a wider sociohistorical approach).