In search of (lost?) contact-induced change in phonology

This is a keynote presentation at the Fourth AMC Symposium: a themed conference on the topic of language contact and language change. In this talk, I explore how we can integrate current approaches in phonological theory and historical phonology with current understanding in the study of language contact. I argue that phonological patterns, especially those that go beyond exchange of matter such as phonemes, require quite specific social and historical conditions to spread by contact. In the talk I show that these conditions may be met more rarely than is sometimes assumed in the literature, both for recipient-language agentivity situations with stable bilingualism and — especially so — for language shift and ‘substrate’ situations. I also point to further challenges presented by phonology for the study of language contact.

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