Linguistic Areas and Language History

Abstract

Linguistic areas, or Sprachbunde, have been the topic of a very large amount of research for more than a century.1 But although there are numerous valuable studies of particular linguistic areas and of particular features within certain linguistic areas, there is still little consensus on the general nature of the phenomenon. This paper is a preliminary attempt to characterize the notion ‘linguistic area’. Section §1 below begins with a definition of the term and a justification of the definition. I will also state my position, with reasons, on several controversial issues in this domain, and then articulate what seem to me to be the most important historical questions about linguistic areas: How do linguistic areas arise? And how do the areal structural features originate and diffuse through the area? The section concludes with an outline of the crucial requisites for determining that contact-induced change has occurred; this outline sets the stage for the attempt, in §2, to interpret the areal features of five representative Sprachbunde historically. Section 3 is a brief conclusion. Not surprisingly, given the immense complexity and diversity one finds in the contact situations that comprise linguistic areas, no simple answers to the ‘how’ questions are possible; but comparing different linguistic areas at least shows what some of the many possibilities are. The most important (though not very neat) conclusion, however, is that attempts to find very general social and/or linguistic principles of convergence in a linguistic area are doomed—not only because every Sprachbund differs from every other one, but also because the conditions of contact in large Sprachbunde will inevitably vary over time and space. In other words, Sprachbund is not a uniform phenomenon linguistically, socially, or historically.