ABSTRACT
All variation and change can be viewed as the outcome of some form of contact between different individuals or members of different groups. For example, in New York City the situation could be cast as one in which there was contact between speakers with raised and unraised (oh) and (a). Similarly, the expansion of non-standard were into negative tags in York English or the loss of ne in French must in some sense be the result of contact between speakers of different ages.
