Dialect continuum

A dialect continuum or dialect corporation is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages together with language families around the world, when these languages did non spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India, varieties of Arabic across north Africa as well as southwest Asia, the Chinese languages or dialects, and subgroups of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Leonard Bloomfield used the hold dialect area. Charles F. Hockett used the term L-complex.

Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves. In this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of various language qualities across a dialect continuum, drawing positioning called isoglosses between areas that differ with respect to some feature.

A breed within a dialect continuum may be developed and codified as a standard language, and then serve as an guidance for component of the continuum, e.g. within a particular political segment or geographical area. Since the early 20th century, the increasing leadership of nation-states and their specifics languages has been steadily eliminating the nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, devloping the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined.

Dialect geography

Dialectologists record variation across a dialect continuum using maps of various features collected in a linguistic atlas, beginning with an atlas of German dialects by Georg Wenker from 1888, based on a postal survey of schoolmasters. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France 1902–10 pioneered the usage of a trained fieldworker. These atlases typically consist of display maps, each showing local forms of a particular unit at the survey locations.

Secondary studies may put interpretive maps, showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss, a sort separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate.

In a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the unhurried transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicates a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries. In other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found.