Edinburgh Historical Linguistics
Spanish as a Contact LanguageAn Ecological History
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About this book
Exploring the role of multiple forms of contact in determining the history of Spanish
- Provides a panoramic view of the evolution of Spanish from an ecological perspective
- Includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter to help readers critically engage with the topic
- Connects demographic, socioeconomic and cultural evidence with linguistic data to offer a holistic reassessment of the role of contact in the history of Spanish
- Incorporates both well-known settings of change and lesser-known situations of contact in minoritised populations
Languages do not exist beyond their speakers, but the history of individual languages has often been told as if they had a life of their own, emerging from other languages, growing and sometimes dying. When applied to Spanish, this story line commonly begins in spoken Latin, with the language taking shape in medieval Spain before spreading beyond Europe in the colonial period.
This book proposes a new take on this narrative. Instead of seeing Spanish as a linguistic entity with linear development, what would its history look like if we think of it as a centuries-long constellation of contact events? A History of Spanish as a Contact Language revisits the evolution of Spanish from the perspective of the ecology of language, centring speakers as the only historical agents of language transmission and change. Taking the speakers’ vantage point opens up exciting possibilities to rethink what Spanish is, how it has changed, and who has played a role in this process.
Reviews
Spanish as a Contact Language brings an original perspective by placing explanatory emphasis on the notions of idiolect, cognitive capabilities, and communication between speakers as the source of all forms of language change. As the author notes, he has written this book with a broad audience in mind, from advanced college students with at least some background in linguistics to specialists in the field. These would include not only experts in historical linguistics, dialectal variation, and language contact, but also those interested in the study of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, language typology, and multilingualism.
This work is an important addition to the field and is set to become a text of key importance for all those interested in diachronic linguistics.
Table of contents
Maps, figures and tables
Abbreviations
Preface
1. Spanish as Myth, Spanish as Contact
2. The ubiquity of Contact: Towards an Ecological Approach to Language Change
3. Spanish Before Spain: Ancient, Roman Era and Medieval Contacts
4. Spanish Beyond Spain: Contact Ecologies in the Colonial Era
5. Spanish in the Post-colonial World: New Nations, New Citizens, New Contacts
6. Recent Contacts: New Language Ecologies in a Transnational World
7. Towards New Ecological Narratives in Language Histories