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How optimal is the Optimization Model?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2013

BERND HEINE
BERND HEINE*
Affiliation:
Institut für Afrikanistik, Universität zu Kö[email protected]
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Extract

Pieter Muysken's article on modeling and interpreting language contact phenomena constitutes an important contribution.The approach chosen is a top–down one, building on the author's extensive knowledge of all matters relating to language contact. The paper aims at integrating a wide range of factors and levels of social, cognitive, and linguistic accounts, incorporating findings on bilingual individuals in the same way as on language systems in contact and bilingual speech communities. It enables the reader to place seemingly disparate phenomena in a wider perspective and to relate quite divergent manifestations of language contact to one another in a principled way. In accordance with its ambitious goal, the paper proposes a high level of generalization, or abstraction.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 743 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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