Publisher's Synopsis
Dialects in Contact is an attempt to observe and account for the influence mutually intelligible dialects of a language have on one another when they come into contact. It examines linguistic accommodation in face-to-face interaction and argues that accommodation is crucial to an understanding of longer-term phenomena: the geographical spread of linguistic features, the development of 'interdialect' and the growth of new dialects.
Peter Trudgill looks at the development of dialects in border areas and new towns and at transplanted varieties of language resulting for example from urbanization and colonization. Based on research into English, Scandinavian and other languages, his book draws important theoretical conclusions from a wide range of linguistic data.
