This volume serves to illustrate the promising insights to be gained when cross-fertilizing
Cognitive Linguistics and contact linguistics which each hold crucial ingredients to an
encompassing study of contact-induced variation and change. Combining the study of the
individual mind with the study of shared context bridging research on experience and
perspective with research on variation and change and tackling the methodological complexities
that this empirical approach to mental categorization entails help us determine how the
meaningful units that make up language are categorized and structured in the bi- and
multilingual mind and by extension in any human mind. Together the ten papers in this volume
reveal the complexities of the interaction between usage meaning and mind in contact-induced
variation and change which we hope will inspire future research exploring the possibilities of
the cross-fertilization we have labeled Cognitive Contact Linguistics.
