Structure and variation in language contact is a collection of 15 papers that were presented at a number of conferences held by the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics during 2003 and 2004. The editors have separated the volume into two manageable sections. Chapters in the first section focus on the phonetic, syntactic and morphosyntactic structures of several pidgins and creoles. The second part of the volume is dedicated to variation in a number of pidgin and creole varieties, with a focus on language contact as a mechanism for variation and change. The varieties covered in the collection include Surinamese creoles, Haitian French, Chinook Jargon, Sri Lankan Malay, Yiddish, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Bahamian Creole, and Afro-Portuguese, Afro-Hispanic, and Iberian creoles. Eight of these papers examine tense, mood, and aspect, an area of particular interest in pidgin and creole studies. Other phenomena examined include tonal lexical contrast in phonosyntactic environments, verb-object ordering and affix positioning, syntactic features of negation, pluralization patterns, agglutination, serial verb constructions, and relexification.

While the main focus of the volume is on internal constraints on grammar, the effects of a number of social constraints on the patterns of variation within the different varieties are also considered. For example, the role of children and adults in the creolization process is investigated, with innovative syntactic constructions attributed to both generations where a single generation had previously largely been held accountable. Gender roles and social prestige are also highlighted as significant factors in the use of particular features in some varieties.

The papers in the volume draw on a range of data collection methods, including many typically used in variationist studies, dialectology, and historical linguistics. The data presented come from a range of sources, written and spoken, formal and informal, which provides for both synchronic and diachronic perspectives on fundamental issues in the field of pidgin and creole studies, as well as linguistics generally. Such issues include the contribution of substrate and superstrate languages to the development of pidgins and creoles, along with consideration of the effect of length of contact between varieties on the syntactic structures observed. Furthermore, close examination of the process of decreolization is shown to provide insight into the variation and change observed across languages in contact.