ABSTRACT
The languages indigenous to North America show both great genealogical diversity and varied contact effects. Some communities have traditionally resisted conscious borrowing, but there are some strong linguistic areas. Some languages exhibit evidence of lexical borrowing, which has in turn affected their phonological systems. More often layers of contact have shaped grammar over time. Structural parallelisms in modern languages are not necessarily the result of direct transfer, but rather transfer of their precursors, even frequent patterns of expression. North America is also home to contact languages with diverse origins and at various stages of development: jargons, pidgins, and mixed languages.
