This book documents modern Baba Malay, a critically endangered Austronesian-based contact language with a Sinitic substrate. Formed via intermarriage between Hokkien-speaking male traders and indigenous women in the Malay Peninsula, the language has less than 1,000 speakers in Singapore and less than 1,000 speakers in Malacca, Malaysia. This volume fills a gap for reference grammars of contact languages in general. Reference grammars written on contact languages are rare, and much rarer is a reference grammar written about a critically endangered Austronesian-based contact language. The reference grammar, which aims to be useful to linguists and general readers interested in Baba Malay, describes the language's sociohistorical background, its circumstances of endangerment, and provides information regarding the phonology, parts of speech, and syntax of Baba Malay as spoken in Singapore. A chapter that differentiates this variety from that spoken in Malacca is also included. The grammar demonstrates that the nature of Baba Malay is highly systematic, and not altogether simple, providing structural information for those who are interested in the typology of contact languages.

Professor Lyle Campbell has had a long and distinguished career and his extensive work on the languages of Mesoamerica have inspired research and researchers. In this volume, contributors come together to present new data, analyses and theoretical perspectives on how understanding language change raises questions for language documentation, description and even revitalization. Coverage ranges from the linguistic isolates Basque and Mapundungun to large families such as Tupian and Austronesian and spans a range of theoretical issues including ongoing language change, etymological opacity, word order, alignment systems and grammatical relations, language contact, onomastics and the study of pre-history. The book shows that linguistic fieldwork, when carried out and used appropriately, allows for a more consistent understanding of language change, and for a better understanding of the ethnographic record. It also explores the junctures between language change, linguistic diversity and other related fields that draw on primary linguistic fieldwork.