Ancient Linguistic Area

Translations

Area linguistica (antica) | aire linguistique (ancienne) | Sprachenareal (im Altertum)

Article

The concept of linguistic area generally refers to a geographical region in which languages influences each other on the different levels of lexicon and grammar. As many such areas have been observed in the modern world, it is one of the most variable and blurry concepts both in linguistic and in cultural studies (see Matras 2009, 286-296, for discussion). To some extent, the concept seems to be interchangeable with that of “language league” (Sprachbund), while, on the other hand, this latter label often indicates a particularly intensive area of grammatical interference, which is a rather uncommon case to observe when working on corpus languages (Giusfredi - Merlin 2018, 101).

In the environment of the ancient world, areas of intensive lexical exchange certainly existed (Anatolia, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East provide several examples). However, cases of long distance grammatical interference are not easily identified, nor was the existence of a proper mixed-language ever documented. Therefore, in the framework of reference employed by the PALaC project, a linguistic area is defined in a milder fashion as an area featuring one of the following:

1. intensive exchange of linguistic material (lexical or grammatical);
2. occasional shared structural traits that:
   1. are shared by the languages in the area;
   2. are not shared by other branches of the language family to which the involved languages belong, or other neighboring languages;
   3. are not typologically prevalent in a polygenetic fashion.

Example

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References

Giusfredi, F. and Merlin, S. 2018. A contact-based study of the languages and cultures of Pre-Classical Anatolia: the project PALaC, News from the lands of the Hittites 2018, 95-104. Matras, Y. 2009. Language Contact, Cambridge.