Romani in Britain

Yaron Matras is a Professor in Linguistics at the University of Manchester. Major publications include Romani: A Linguistic Introduction (CUP, 2002), (a study of Romani grammatical categories from a discourse perspective), a volume (co-edited with Peter Bakker) on The Mixed Language Debate (Mouton, 2004), a forthcoming volume (co-edited with April McMahon and Nigel Vincent) on Linguistic Areas (to appear with Palgrave), and several edited and co-edited volumes on Romani linguistics.

• Chapter 1: Angloromani: A different kind of language?; 1.1. Gypsies and Travellers in Britain; 1.2. Language contact, language change and dialects; 1.3. 'Mixed' Romani dialects and Para-Romani; 1.4. Creoles and pidgins; 1.5. Mixed Languages; 1.6. In-group lexicons, argots and 'secret' languages; 1.7. Language shift and language loss; 1.8. Toward an integrated scenario: The functional turnover model; Chapter 2: The roots of Romani; 2.1. Pre-European origins; 2.2. Innovations acquired outside the Indian Subcontinent; 2.3. The impact of Greek; 2.4. Toward a chronology of Romani migrations; 2.5. Dialect differentiation in Romani; 2.5.1. The period of dialect formation; 2.5.2. Variation within Early Romani; 2.5.3. Local and regional changes; 2.5.4. Territorial developments and major isoglosses; Chapter 3: The historical position of British Romani; 3.1. The sources; 3.2. A structural overview of British Romani; 3.2.1. Lexicon and word formation; 3.2.2. Phonology; 3.2.3. Nominal inflection; 3.2.4. Verbs; 3.2.5. Grammatical vocabulary and morphosyntax; 3.2.6. The impact of English; 3.3. The position of British Romani among Romani dialects; 3.4. The decline of inflected Romani in Britain; Chapter 4: The structural composition of Angloromani; 4.1. The data corpus; 4.2. Phonology and phonological variation; 4.3. Word formation and word classes; 4.3.1. Word derivation; 4.3.2. Grammatical vocabulary; 4.3.3. Retention of grammatical inflection; 4.4. Morpho-syntactic characteristics; 4.5. Lexical composition and lexical distribution; Chapter 5: The conversational functions of Angloromani; 5.1. Back to 'languageness'; 5.2. Angloromani as a speech-act device; 5.3. Angloromani in narration; 5.4. Speakers' perspectives on language loss and revitalisation; 5.5. The prospects of a 'language revival'; Chapter 6: Conclusions: The decline, death, and afterlife of a language; 6.1. The historical decline of inflected Romani; 6.2. Bilingualism after language shift; References; Appendix I: Lexicon of Angloromani; Appendix II: Predecessor expressions by origin