Language contact is part of the evolutionary history of languages in the world, and in this chapter we focus on various aspects of contact that surface when considering communities of language users that are bilingual and bimodal (i.e., they use languages that are perceived either visually, auditorally, or both). One can find features of an ambient spoken or written language within a signed language just as one can find words, sounds, and grammatical constructions from one spoken language within another. Evidence of language contact can be found in everyday conversations (e.g., with bits of one language surfacing in the other) and also in various linguistic features of languages that have been in sustained contact over a period of time (e.g., fully integrated words that originated in another language). This is true from the hills and valleys of the American Southwest, where English and Spanish can be heard in everyday conversations in restaurants, shopping areas, and other public places, to the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, where American Sign Language (ASL), English, and other signed and spoken languages pepper the auditory and visual landscape of that historical institution. ![]() ![]() In some regions of the world, the regular use of more than one language within a single geographical area is commonplace in everyday life.
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