"This book presents an insightful account of the complex linguistic situation in South China and surrounding regions, focusing on language contact. Engaging, refreshing, and informative, the work is an important contribution to the study of languages and cultures in mainland Southeast Asia." --Yongxian Luo, University of Melbourne "Huang takes on one of the central questions of linguistics--to explain why languages are structured the way they are--in this convincing examination of minority languages in the Guangxi region. This book argues that there is no comprehensive answer to this question without establishing how the structures of the languages concerned were shaped by processes of grammaticalization and contact with other languages." --Bernd Heine, University of Cologne "A meticulous piece of research on many interesting contact-induced grammatical phenomena in Guangxi." --Hilário de Sousa, École des hautes études en sciences sociales.