Most of the contributions published in this volume were prepared within
the framework of the research project Dynamics of Contacts between
Populations and Languages - Lexical and Structural Diffusion and the
Genealogies in the Sahel co-ordinated at the Faculty of Humanities,
Charles University in Prague, and in a workshop dedicated to the project
at the occasion of the XVIIth International Congress of Linguists
(Prague 2003). The purpose of the project was to examine the linguistic
situation in the Sahel in view of the recent developments in the study
of language contacts, assessing the reality of the Sahel Sprachbund. The
concept of Sprachbund, or 'linguistic area' as a bundle of features
common to languages over a geographical area has experienced
considerable extention: from phonology and morphology, its domain has
been extended to morphosyntax and lexicon. By doing so, the concepts of
calquing, typological convergence, reflexification and metatypy are
being used to characterize the process witnessed in the study of
language contacts.