Convergence (Other Keyword)
1-1 (1 Record)
Long-term social interaction is reflected in parallel linguistic structures among the languages of the lower Amazon (2016)
DOCUMENT
Citation Only
A central concept in historical linguistics is that of the sprachbund, or linguistic area, where languages of different families show shared structural traits as a result of long-term social interaction rather than shared inheritance. Through language contact phenomena such as bilingualism, calquing, the formation of trade languages, etc., this process of linguistic diffusion and convergence sometimes flies under the scientific radar, especially in regions such as Amazonia where there tend to be...