The dynamics of lifelong acquisition in dialect contact and change

Acquisition research involving speakers of mutually intelligible varieties (dialects) or mutually unintelligible varieties (languages) reveals a wide range of possible acquisition outcomes at different life stages and their potential to shape language change across the community. Since contexts of dialect contact often include language contact, attempts to understand the link between dialect acquisition and dialect change must also consider language contact as a potential factor. This chapter surveys the research on dialect contact and lifespan change in contexts of language maintenance in both non-mobile and mobile languages users as a window into the human capacity for lifelong acquisition and change. The chapter adopts a linguistic repertoire focus, recognizing that bidialectalism/bilingualism is a matter of degree, and that language dominance plays a key role in crosslinguistic transfer. This proposal is illustrated with a case study of dialect and language contact in Early Modern Dutch.