ABSTRACT
The urban contact dialects in question are developing or have developed from languages with mostly relatively constrained syllable structures, often CV, but involve contact languages with more complex phonotactics, including onset clusters and coda obstruents. On the structural side, the long tradition of assuming simplification under contact is still steaming along today, the work of people like DeGraff and Trudgill notwithstanding. One consistent theme of the chapters is the problem of ‘named languages’ or varieties, as recently reviewed by Horner and Bradley. The culmination of such trends would be what Hurst-Harosh describes as urban vernaculars “becoming the unmarked norm in urban contexts”. Broad and deep pools of variation make change almost inevitable. Speakers are complexifying their languages structurally, both by Trudgill’s definition but also in ways that have been less discussed in this literature, as the example of phonotactic patterns illustrates.
