Lars Borin, Anju Saxena, Shafqat Mumtaz Virk, Bernard Comrie South Asia – comprising the seven countries Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, as well as immediately adjacent areas of neighboring countries (parts of Afghanistan, China, and Myanmar) – is the home of hundreds of languages belonging to several unrelated language families. The region has a long history of far-ranging multilingualism and close linguistic and cultural contacts, the details of which are still far from completely understood. Today, the …