1. Introduction; 2. Part I. Challenges to accepted views of convergence and divergence in language contact situations; 3. Divergence, convergence, contact: Challenges for the genealogical classification of languages (by Bossong, Georg); 4. Increases in complexity as a result of language contact (by Dahl, Osten); 5. Converging genetically related languages: Endstation code mixing? (by Braunmuller, Kurt); 6. Part II. Convergence and divergence in different varieties in oral and written discourse; 7. Converging languages, diverging varieties: Innovative relativisation patterns in Old Swedish (by Hoder, Steffen); 8. Converging verbal phrases in related languages: A case study from Faro-Danish and Danish-German language contact situations (by Kuhl, Karoline); 9. Convergence and divergence of communicative norms through language contact in translation (by Becher, Viktor); 10. On the importance of spontaneous speech innovations in language contact situations (by Vann, Robert E.); 11. Part III. Phonological processes of variation and change in bilingual individuals; 12. Gradient merging of vowels in Barcelona Catalan under the influence of Spanish (by Cortes, Susana); 13. Comparing the representation of iambs by monolingual German, monolingual Spanish and bilingual German-Spanish children (by Arias, Javier); 14. Author index; 15. Subject index

This collection makes it clear that no language system should be viewed in isolation; instead these pieces urge us on toward a future in which contact and multilingualism are acknowledged as central to the story of language evolution. This volume will be a useful resource for a number of experts, especially as a review of relevant theoretical issues, and will be particularly welcomed by language contact specialists on Scandinavian, Germanic and Iberian languages.