Areal feature

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In

lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see "sprachbund
").

Genetic relationships are represented in the

wave model
.

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);

Major models

William Labov 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.[3] 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".[4]

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, and the languages of the Indian subcontinent.[citation needed]

Examples

Phonetics and phonology

Morphophonology

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, considering the lack of a common root for "have" verbs.[10]
  • The development of a
    perfect aspect
    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
    perfect aspect
    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
    dative, and superessive number formation in some languages of the Balkans
    .
  • The spread of a .
  • A system of classifiers/measure words in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area.

Sociolinguistics

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

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "etymonline.com: areal (adj.)".
  2. ^ Drechsel, Emanuel J. (1988). "Wilhelm von Humboldt and Edward Sapir: analogies and homologies in their linguistic thoughts", in Shipley, William, ed. (December 1988). In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics. the Hague: de Gruyter Mouton. p. 826. . p. 254.
  3. ^ Labov, William (2007). "Transmission and diffusion" (PDF). Language. 83 (2): 344–387. . Retrieved 18 Aug 2010.
  4. ^ Labov 2007:6.
  5. ^ Berger, H. Die Burushaski-Sprache von Hunza und Nagar. Vols. I-III. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1988
  6. .
  7. ^ G. Morgenstierne, Irano-Dardica. Wiesbaden 1973
  8. .
  9. ^ Winfred Philipp Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Routledge, 1992, p. 170

References