Contact between languages often leads to linguistic changes. Although the social factors and the typological characteristics of the languages influence the change process, the interaction between these factors is not well-known. This is partially due to the fact that the long-term and short-term effects of language contact are rarely brought…

This issue of "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition" is about convergence, a type of language change that is contact-induced and results in greater similarity between two languages that are in contact with each other. In Backus (forthcoming), I have attempted an overview of contact-induced language change, focusing on causal factors, on mechanisms…