Discussions of transfer often begin with the work of American linguists in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet while the work of Charles Fries, Robert Lado, and others was clearly a major catalyst for subsequent research, serious thinking about cross-linguistic influences dates back to a controversy in historical linguistics in the nineteenth century. Accordingly, this chapter begins with a discussion of that controversy among scholars whose primary interests were not second language acquisition or language teaching but rather language classification and language change. The controversy promoted work on language contact that overlaps considerably with more recent studies of second language acquisition. Because the thinking of Fries, Lado, and others prompted much of the growth of research in second language acquisition, their views receive considerable attention, as do the views of some who have been very critical of their work. While this chapter can give only a suggestion of the historical context of the polemics on transfer, it provides important background for some fundamental issues discussed in subsequent chapters.

Languages (and dialects) in contact

Historical change and language mixing

Language contact situations arise whenever there is a meeting of speakers who do not all share the same language and who need to communicate. When the communicative needs of people go beyond what gestures and other paralinguistic signals can achieve, some use of a second language becomes necessary. The languages learned in contact situations may or may not show some kind of language mixing, that is, the merging of characteristics of two or more languages in any verbal communication.