Questioning Language Contact. Introduction

What is it about?

1 How should this book be read? Questioning Language Contact. Limits of Contact, Contact at its Limits (henceforth QLC) is the first volume of the new peer-reviewed book series ‘Brill Studies in Language Contact and Dynamics of Language’ (BSCD), which focuses on the study of language contact, language use and language change in accordance with a view of language contact whereby both empirical data (the precise description of languages and how they are used) and the resulting theoretical elaborations (whence the statement and analysis of new problems) become the primary engines for advancing our understanding of the nature of language and the dynamics of language change. Consequently this involves linguistic, anthropological, sociological, historical, and cognitive factors, but also potentially a critical approach to the methods used for the study of these phenomena. This of course implies paying particular attention to epistemological works as they reshape the requirements for knowledge in this field. Such is the undertaking of the QLC project. More specifically, how can one characterize QLC? Before answering and detailing the contents and objectives of QLC, I will begin by stating what it is not.

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