Description: This book raises some important questions about formal linguistics and functionalist sociolinguistics when they encompass the same subject matter, linguistic borrowing and code-switching/mixing. These questions arise in the context of formalist and functionalist accounts of language contact and are tested here against some interesting Hindustani-English contact facts from India. The test reveals what these paradigms contribute to our understanding of language contact (and language in general) and precisely where they seem to go wrong.
Review Quotes: «The study of language contact from the perspective of linguistic theory keeps raising interesting questions for several disciplines. This provocative book shows Raj Singh at his best and is the result of many years of hard thinking and looking for the crucial bits of evidence.» (Pieter Muysken, Universiteit van Amsterdam)