What is an example of a sprachbund?

Examples include areas of Papua New Guinea, the Amazon basin, and the Australian desert. Other situations involve geographic proximity between different language communities with only slow spread of features across languages, creating so-called sprachbund or linguistic areas.

What is language fragmentation?

Linguistic fragmentation. A condition in which many languages are spoken, each by a relatively small number of people. Example: In the Caucasus Region of eastern Europe, many different cultural groups have settled and maintain their different languages.

What does grammaticalization mean in linguistics?

Grammaticalization can be understood as a process by which grammar is created; more narrowly, it is defined as the development from lexical to grammatical forms, and from grammatical to even more grammatical forms.

Is Balkan a language?

The Balkan languages are traditionally defined as Albanian, Modern Greek, Balkan Romance (Romanian, Aromanian, and Meglenoromanian), and Balkan Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, and the southernmost dialects of the former Serbo-Croatian, which dialects are called Torlak).

What is the Balkan Sprachbund Why is it important?

The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is an ensemble of areal features— similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology— among the languages of the Balkans. They have similar case systems, in those that have preserved grammatical case and verb conjugation systems. …

What is language fragmentation where do we see it the most?

According to Wikipedia, Papua New Guinea with over 850 languages is the most linguistically diverse place on earth. Now the Ethnologues calculate Papua’s fractionation score at 0.990, making it indeed the most fragmented country on earth.

What does Isoglass mean?

Definition of isogloss 1 : a boundary line between places or regions that differ in a particular linguistic feature. 2 : a line on a map representing an isogloss.

What is grammaticalization and examples?

A well-known example of grammaticalization is that of the process in which the lexical cluster let us, for example in “let us eat”, is reduced to let’s as in “let’s you and me fight”. …

Do the Balkans speak Russian?

Russia has soft power in the Balkans but it is uneven. With the possible exception of Bulgaria, Russian is not widely read or spoken in the region.

Is Russian a Balkan language?

From their homeland in east-central Europe (Poland or Ukraine), the Slavic languages have spread to the territory of the Balkans (Bulgarian; Macedonian; Slovene; and Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin [sometimes grouped together as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian]), central Europe (Czech and Slovak).

Do Balkan countries speak the same language?

They really did speak a different language than the other countries. But Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia all declared their own separate national languages.

What is a sprachbund of languages?

A sprachbund (German: [ˈʃpʁaːxbʊnt], “federation of languages”) – also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, diffusion area or language crossroads – is a group of languages that have common features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related.

What are the features of the Balkan sprachbund?

Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept. The languages of the Balkan sprachbund share their similarities despite belonging to various separate language family (genetic) branches.

Where are the Sprachbunds of Southeast Asia?

Every inhabited continent contains at least one Sprachbund; linguistic areas lie in Ethiopia, the Balkans in southeastern Europe, and northern California. N. J. Enfield (2005) writes extensively about the Sprachbund of Mainland Southeast Asia (“MSEA”) and its characteristics.

What is a linguistic area?

In a linguistic area, also called a Sprachbund, neighboring languages exhibit similar grammatical, syntactic, and phonological characteristics. Every inhabited continent contains at least one Sprachbund; linguistic areas lie in Ethiopia, the Balkans in southeastern Europe, and northern California.