Languages in a situation of contact, whether they are receding or being maintained by their speakers, are characterized by constant and rapid change. Thus they provide a testing ground for hypotheses about processes of linguistic change. In this original study of an intergenerational sample of Spanish-English bilinguals in Los Angeles County, Carmen Silva-Corvalán explores in depth the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes underlying language maintenance, as well as changes characteristic of language shift and loss, bringing together analytical techniques employed in sociolinguistics, functional syntax, and discourse analysis.