Abstract This article combines methods and insights from dialect geography, areal and contact linguistics. It focuses on a specific, yet heavily understudied mixed dialect of Belarusian spoken in the entire Slavic-Baltic contact region. It turns out that on practically all levels (from phonetics to syntax), the variation of features encountered in this dialect is, from all varieties of that region, the most representative for convergence phenomena characteristic of East Slavic, Polish and/or Baltic varieties in contact with each other. This convergence is so far-reaching that, for instance, it seems impossible to distinguish the rural Belarusian vernacular from regional varieties of Polish on the basis of structural properties alone, despite the fact that these varieties are clearly perceived as different by both native speakers and field linguists. Simultaneously, features of the Belarusian dialect – and, thus, of the whole contact region which it most accurately reflects – should be judged under the perspective of larger areal clines (in particular, within the eastern part of the Circum Baltic Area); this view is pursued on the basis of Wiemer (2004) and more recent insights into the areal distribution of structural features crossing family boundaries. Such areal continua, in turn, intersect with inner-Slavic dialect continua and phenomena occurring in various locally restricted “pockets” scattered around in Slavic. On the background of this, we approach answers to the problem of determining the influence of contact (with Baltic and/or Finnic) over “genetic heritage” and the question of which features are more “immune” against influence from genealogically less close contact varieties.

Abstract In this paper we compare the code-switching (CS) patterns in three bilingual corpora collected in Wales, Miami and Patagonia, Argentina. Using the Matrix Language Framework to do a clause-based analysis of a sample of data, we consider the impact of structural relationships and extra-linguistic factors on CS patterns. We find that the Matrix Language (ML) is uniform where the language pairs have contrasting word orders, as in Welsh-English (VSO-SVO) and WelshSpanish (VSO-SVO) but diverse where the word order is similar as in Spanish-English (SVO-SVO). We find that the diversity of the ML in Miami is related to the diversity of degrees of proficiency, ethnic identities, and social networks amongst members of that community, while the uniformity of the ML in Wales is related to the uniformity of these factors. This is not so clear in Patagonia, however, where there is little CS produced in conversation. We suggest that the members of the speech community use Spanish or Welsh mostly in a monolingual mode, depending on the interlocutor and the social situation.

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"Deux textes religieux de Bourbon du 18e siècle et l'histoire du créole réunionnais. Philippe-Albert Caulier C. M: Profession de Foy, en jargon des Esclaves Nêgres/Petit Catechisme de l'Isle de Bourbon tourné au Style des Esclaves Nêgres" published on 01 Jan 2009 by Brill.

Cet ouvrage prend place dans une tradition d'dition des rencontres des Tables rondes du Moufia , en prsentant ici les actes de la Table ronde de 2005. Il manifeste d'ailleurs la mme organisation que, par exemple, la cinquime Table ronde, celle de 1998 qui a t dite en 2000 (Bavoux et al.) : une premire partie qui permet de verser des pices au dossier de la problmatique des franais en contacts, partir de situations comparables un titre ou un autre, en Europe, en Amrique ou en Afrique (ici, successivement, des tudes sur la Louisiane, la Cte d'Ivoire, la Belgique et le Maroc), analyses traites par un spcialiste reconnu de la situation en question ; et une deuxime partie centre sur les aires crolophones, particulirement la Runion. Cet ouvrage prend ainsi harmonieusement place dans un paysage de linguistique franaise de plus en plus intress la variation des franais hors de France et en contact, dont un ouvrage comme celui de Brasseur & Falkert (2005) par exemple constitue une bonne illustration, toutefois situ hors du pan crole, spcialis sur l'Amrique, et centr avant tout sur la morpho-syntaxe.