geolinguistics Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geolin ...

, areal features are elements shared by languages or

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...

, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see " sprachbund"). Genetic relationships are represented in the family tree model of language change, and areal relationships are represented in the

wave model In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory (German ''Wellentheorie'') is a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from its region of origin, affecting ...

Characteristics

Resemblances between two or more languages (whether in typology or in vocabulary) have been observed to result from several mechanisms, including lingual genealogical relation (descent from a common ancestor language, not principally related to biological genetics) ; borrowing between languages ; retention of features when a population adopts a new language ; and chance coincidence. When little or no direct documentation of ancestor languages is available, determining whether the similarity is genetic or merely areal can be difficult.

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...

notably used evidence of contact and diffusion as a negative tool for genetic reconstruction, treating it as a subject in its own right only at the end of his career (e.g., for the influence of Tibetan on Tocharian).Drechsel, Emanuel J. (1988). "Wilhelm von Humboldt and Edward Sapir: analogies and homologies in their linguistic thoughts", in p. 254.

Major models

William Labov William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of ...

in 2007 reconciled the tree and wave models in a general framework based on differences between children and adults in their language learning ability. Adults do not preserve structural features with sufficient regularity to establish a norm in their community, but children do. Linguistic features are diffused across an area by contacts among adults. Languages branch into dialects and thence into related languages through small changes in the course of children's learning processes which accumulate over generations, and when speech communities do not communicate (frequently) with each other, these cumulative changes diverge. Diffusion of areal features for the most part hinges on low-level phonetic shifts, whereas tree-model transmission includes in addition structural factors such as "grammatical conditioning, word boundaries, and the systemic relations that drive chain shifting".

Sprachbund

In some areas with high linguistic diversity, a number of areal features have spread across a set of languages to form a sprachbund (also known as a linguistic area, convergence area or diffusion area). Some examples are the Balkan sprachbund, the

Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...

, and the languages of the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

Examples

Phonetics and phonology

* The spread of the

guttural R Guttural R is the phenomenon whereby a rhotic consonant (an "R-like" sound) is produced in the back of the vocal tract (usually with the uvula) rather than in the front portion thereof and thus as a guttural consonant. Speakers of languages w ...

from either German or French to several Northern European languages. * Presence of (

dark L The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...

), usually contrasting with palatalized in Slavic, Baltic and Turkic languages of Central Asia. * Possibly the

Satem Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

sound change. * Development of a three- tone system with no tones in words ending in -''p'', -''t'', -''k'', followed by a tone split, and many other phonetic similarities in the

. *

Retroflex consonants A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...

in the

Burushaski Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people ...

, Nuristani, Dravidian, Munda,The Munda Languages. Edited by Gregory D. S. Anderson. London and New York: Routledge (Routledge Language Family Series), 2008. and Indo-Aryan families of

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...

. * The occurrence of click consonants in Bantu languages of southern Africa, which originated in the

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages (; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a group of African languages originally classified together by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan languages share click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of ...

. * The lack of

fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

. * The use of

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...

and aspirated consonants in the

languages of the Caucasus The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows t ...

. * The prevalence of

and lateral fricatives and

affricates An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair ...

in the Pacific Northwest of North America. * The development of a

close front rounded vowel The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is /y/, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y. Ac ...

in the Bearnese dialect of

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

and the

Souletin dialect Souletin or Zuberoan ( eu, Zuberera) is the Basque dialect spoken in Soule, France. Souletin is marked by influences from Occitan (in particular the Béarnese dialect), especially in the lexicon. Another distinct characteristic is the use of ...

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

. * The absence of and presence of in many languages of Central and

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

. * The lack of

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...

in languages of the

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

and the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and th ...

. * The absence of but presence of and in many languages of

Northern Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

and the Arabian Peninsula. * The presence of a voicing contrast on fricatives e.g. vs in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

and

Southwestern Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...

Morphophonology

* Vowel alternation patterns in reduplicatives.

Morphology

Syntax

* The tendency in much of Europe to use a transitive verb (e.g. "I have") for possession, rather than a possessive dative construction such as ''mihi est'' (Latin: 'to me is') which is more likely the original possessive construction in

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

, considering the lack of a common root for "have" verbs.Winfred Philipp Lehmann, ''Historical Linguistics: An Introduction'', Routledge, 1992, p. 170
/ref> * The development of a

perfect aspect The perfect tense or aspect ( abbreviated or ) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. ...

using "have" + past participle in many European languages (Romance, Germanic, etc.). (The Latin ''habeo'' and Germanic ''haben'' used for this and the previous point are not in fact etymologically related.) * A

using "be" + past participle for intransitive and reflexive verbs (with participle agreement), present in French, Italian, German, older Spanish and Portuguese, and possibly even English, in phrases like "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" and "The kingdom of this world is become". * Postposed

article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

, avoidance of the

infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...

, merging of genitive and dative, and superessive

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

formation in some languages of the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

. * The spread of a verb-final word order to the Austronesian languages of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. * A system of classifiers/measure words in the

Sociolinguistics

* The use of the plural pronoun as a polite word for ''you'' in much of Europe (the ''tu-vous'' distinction).

Notes

References

* Abbi, Anvita. (1992). ''Reduplication in South Asian Languages: An Areal, Typological, and Historical Study''. India: Allied Publishers. *Blevins, Juliette. (2017). Areal sound patterns: From perceptual magnets to stone soup. In R. Hickey (Ed.), ''The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics'' (pp. 88–121). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * * *Chappell, Hilary. (2001). Language contact and areal diffusion in Sinitic languages. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.), ''Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics'' (pp. 328–357). Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Enfield, N. J. (2005). Areal Linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia. ''Annual Review of Anthropology, 34'', 181-206. * * * *Kirby, James & Brunelle, Marc. (2017). Southeast Asian Tone in Areal Perspective. In R. Hickey (Ed.), ''The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics'' (pp. 703–731). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Matisoff, J. A. (1999). Tibeto-Burman tonology in an areal context. In ''Proceedings of the symposium Crosslinguistic studies of tonal phenomena: Tonogenesis, Japanese Accentology, and Other Topics'' (pp. 3–31). Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. {{DEFAULTSORT:Areal Feature Sprachbund Language geography