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Concept
Sprachbund
Summary
A sprachbund (ˈsprɑːkbʊnd ˈʃpʁaːxbʊnt, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.
A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as a sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Without knowledge of the history of a regional group of similar languages, it may be difficult to determine whether sharing indicates a language family or a sprachbund.
In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from a genetic relationship (rodstvo) and those arising from convergence due to language contact (srodstvo).
Nikolai Trubetzkoy introduced the Russian term языковой союз ( 'language union') in a 1923 article.
In a paper presented to the first International Congress of Linguists in 1928, he used a German calque of this term, Sprachbund, defining it as a group of languages with similarities in syntax, morphological structure, cultural vocabulary and sound systems, but without systematic sound correspondences, shared basic morphology or shared basic vocabulary.
Later workers, starting with Trubetzkoy's colleague Roman Jakobson,
have relaxed the requirement of similarities in all four of the areas stipulated by Trubetzkoy.
Balkan Sprachbund
The idea of areal convergence is commonly attributed to Jernej Kopitar's description in 1830 of Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian as giving the impression of "nur eine Sprachform ... mit dreierlei Sprachmaterie", which has been rendered by Victor Friedman as "one grammar with three lexicons".
The Balkan Sprachbund comprises Albanian, Romanian, the South Slavic languages of the southern Balkans (Bulgarian, Macedonian and to a lesser degree Serbo-Croatian), Greek, Balkan Turkish, and Romani.
Official source
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