Winford begins with a thorough review of the literature on language contact and an outline of the areas of dispute—for instance, challenges to the family tree view of language change and the resistance of many to accept explanations for change that are not internally motivated. He believes that more debate is necessary concerning the degree of language mixing in all languages and laments the continued belief held by some historical linguists that contact-induced change plays little—if any—role in change.

In the second chapter, Winford expounds on how different levels of community bilingualism can affect outcomes of language contact. He also details social motivators for lexical borrowing and suggests a hierarchical model as a means of predicting what will most likely be borrowed. According to Winford, “Lexical borrowing must therefore be seen as just one aspect of a creative process of lexical change under contact, which builds on both native and foreign resources” (p. 59).

Chapter 3 opens with the following question: Does all structural borrowing result from lexical borrowing or can it happen independently? Unlike Thomason and Kaufman (1988), Winford remains unconvinced that structural borrowing occurs independently of lexical borrowing because constraints on maintained languages are quite severe—with the exception of derivational morphology, which is argued to be more lexical than morphological. He cites “evidence of constraints based on transparency and markedness in many instances of morphological borrowing” (p. 95) and makes a convincing argument for transparency for both typologically similar and distant languages for derivational and inflectional morphology alike.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on social and structural contexts of code-switching. Winford covers well the range of competing theories about what motivates code-switching and constrains the output of diverse groups of speakers. He tackles the difficult issue of differentiating between diglossia, code-switching, and borrowing in bilingual communities and distinguishes between these and the language mixing of second language learners.

The chapter on bilingual mixed languages is perhaps the strongest in terms of scope and depth of coverage. He provides detailed case studies of Media Lengua and Michif, which have maintained their original structures but have experienced massive lexical borrowing, and compared them to Ma'a and Copper Island Aleut, which have undergone massive structural change.

In the chapter on SLA and language shift, Winford effectively covers the broad scope of types of contact and then sifts through the varied, overlapping, and often not well-defined terms to describe language transfer, interference, and borrowing. He provides thorough analyses of Irish and Singapore Englishes, which have manifested simplification along with the transfer of first language features.

In the final two chapters, Winford neatly deals with defining pidgins and creoles and the problems with the use of these labels for contact vernaculars that do not fit traditional classifications (e.g., Hiri Motu). He provides comprehensive descriptions of the sociocultural and structural features of pidgins and creoles and clearly differentiates them from fellow travelers who may share some sociocultural and structural features.

Finally, he provides a treatment of restructuring, transfer, and relexification as well as a thoughtful account of why creoles vary so much by taking into consideration the demographics of founder populations and differences in the social setting (homestead vs. plantation).

Considering the topic of the book, the question I kept in my head throughout was: What does Winford do that Thomason and Kaufman (1988) do not? The answer is a simple one: Winford's book is aimed at a different audience. Thomason and Kaufman assumed their readers had significant linguistic background, whereas the Winford text is quite accessible to graduate-level students. From a pedagogical standpoint, it is an excellent choice for a textbook. He provides many examples covering a broad range of languages. Each chapter includes exercises for students that run the gamut of linguistic topics. Additionally, he presents an excellent sampling of case studies with well-glossed example and provides useful adaptations of the tables from Thomason and Kaufman and others. The information is somewhat simplified for the use of students.

Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the field because Winford is outstanding in taking what are often considered disparate phenomena and providing a unifying framework—covering both sociolinguistic and theoretical perspectives—from which to understand them. He presents the questions that both frustrate and intrigue researchers in contact linguistics and makes suggestions for directions for further research. Students of the field will find many ideas for original research.