This book presents a collection of fresh research on language contacts and dialects, and the interface between the two. The volume celebrates the work of Professor Markku Filppula, an eminent scholar in the fields of Irish English, Celtic contacts in the history of English, and language contacts and vernacular universals in nonstandard Englishes.The articles in this volume explore theories and methods employed in the study of language contacts and variation, Celtic substrata in Irish and British English, and dialect in the British Isles. The writers' perspectives range from cognitive processing to sociolinguistics, and from theoretical and comparative discussions to new empirical, corpus-based studies.