Dialect continuum

The most important dialectals in Europe. Similar colors indicate languages that belong to the same dialectal continuum. The arrows indicate the directions of continuity.

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Romance languages Western Germanic languages Nordic languages Slavic languages

A dialectal continuum, geolectal continuum or dialectal complex, is a set of linguistic varieties spoken in territories adjoining, with slight differences in the contiguous areas and with mutual intelligibility that decreases as the distance increases, even disappearing. In this way, two languages accepted as different can have a set of intermediate dialects between them without losing successive intelligibility in any case. A dialect continuum can disappear by fragmenting due to dialectal extinction, a consequence of the reinforcement of one or several standard languages.

Introduction

One way to formalize what constitutes a dialect complex, is that within a set of geographic dialects we can construct a linguistic chain of varieties V₁, V ₂,..., V_n, such that:

1. Each pair of varieties in the previous chain is geographically adjacent, that is, for any k the territory of the variety V_k is adjacent to the territory of the variety V_k+1.
2. Exist a high mutual intelligibility between each pair of neighboring varieties, that is, there is a high degree of intelligibility between V_k and V_k+1For everything k.
3. The mutual integibility between V₁ and V_n be low or nonexistent.

It must be taken into account that although the intelligibility criterion should ideally be able to help us to differentiate the varieties of a language from the varieties of a different language, in the usual definition of a language there are extralinguistic conditions other than mutual intelligibility. This can be seen by considering a couple of examples within the Germanic languages. On the one hand, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, although due to sociopolitical factors they are considered to be different languages. On the other hand, several of the rural varieties labeled as "German" are intelligible to speakers of varieties of "Dutch" but not for speakers of other varieties of German.

Criticism

The spatial treatment of linguistic processes through the geographical delimitation of a dialectal continuum had been a common idea in classical philology. It was naively intended to link the intelligibility of the language to the mere fact of spatial distancing, through a linear diachronic treatment of the evolution of languages. Currently, the use of these schemes is often called into question because they assume the existence of homogeneous linguistic communities, which in reality is not always the case. Modern linguistics has revealed the discontinuous nature of the transmission of linguistic processes. The evolution of those would be conditioned by two factors: the situations of diglossia and bilingualism due to the coexistence of heterogeneous linguistic communities (creolization) and periodification, in which culturally homogeneous communities turn on themselves, when putting themselves in danger. the very existence of the linguistic community, or are confused with others due to the economic or political predominance of one community over the other. This last idea is the main argument given by Banniard to explain the process of fragmentation of the Romance languages, in which the natural evolution of the Latin language, relatively stable at a given moment (dialectal continuum), would be subjected to a series of of extraordinary phenomena that would put the integrity of the various linguistic communities at risk, invasions, demographic decline, situations of political domination, transfer and isolation of population groups... this would give rise to the appearance of a series of solutions that burst into their natural evolution and would determine the creation of island universes or particular situations. In these contexts, the linear evolution of the language would be broken by interrupting the mutual interference of linguistic processes.

From a phonetic point of view, it is now known that the phonetic changes present in all languages show an unquestionable regularity, but as long as they occur within homogeneous geographical and temporal limits. This relative regularity observed first in the comparison of ancient Indo-European languages, and later in some modern groups, especially Germanic and Latin, gave rise to the exposition of universal phonetic principles, the so-called phonetic laws. These universal principles were exposed to deep criticism by structuralism. Modern linguistic research starts from a relativized formulation of linguistic processes, which is based on the following formulation: "same phonemes of different words will evolve in a certain direction whenever they are exposed to the same conditions&# 34; (Leskien's Law). This principle postulates the existence of universal human tendencies, whose divergent results must be attributed to the diversity of circumstances, fundamentally to the articulatory base, the accent, the position in the syllable, in the word and in the phonetic group.

According to Gili Gaya, these trends could be reduced to the following scheme:

• The law of the least effort that relaxes, wears and loses the sounds (genetic processes of elision, lention and metathesis).
• Need to be understood that creates differentiations to maintain or strengthen the clarity of the sign (differentiation).
• Analogy that seeks to unify the system according to its internal coherence (asimilation).
• Imitation of linguistic models (dissimilation).

Well, these processes present a different character depending on the communicability of the linguistic processes, taking into account in particular if the community is expanding or regressing or if the communicability of these processes is mutual (bilingualism) or is unidirectional (diglossia).

The expansion of a language such as English in our days or Latin in ancient times determined a tendency to increase the erosive processes of the language, through a relaxation and/or expansion of the common phonetic law that would allow it to reach to the greatest number of interlocutors. Faced with this wear, the language, however, will maintain a relative balance (intelligibility) despite centrifugal tendencies, attending to the greatest number of communicative processes. This expansion, however, can collapse, giving rise to rapid fragmentation, when, as a consequence of catastrophic situations, communicability drastically decreases, thus producing a rapid fragmentation of the language.

In the case of languages in the process of regression, the speaker's reaction will depend on their social context and the greater or lesser integrity of the group. If we are faced with a closed group that tends to isolate itself in the face of a foreign intrusion, it will normally tend to obscure the pronunciation, breaking the intelligibility of the group with the communities with which it was linked until then. However, when the social context is subjected to a relationship of subordination, let's think of situations of diglossia, the tendency will be to reinforce pronunciation in order to communicate in the best possible way.

Examples

The different varieties of Arabic, which can become difficult intelligibility among themselves, form a continuous dialect.

Iberian Peninsula in 1210, where the Romance languages spoken in the Christian kingdoms to the north formed a continuous Iberian dialect.

Continuum of Iberian languages and dialects today.

• The varieties of German and Dutch formed until the beginning of the centuryXX. a geolectal continuum. Thus, the many dialects usually labeled as forms of German, Dutch or Afrikaans form a single dialectal continuum with three recognized literary standards. Although Dutch and German are not mutually intelligible, there are numerous transition dialects that are. According to the Ausbausprache paradigm - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache, these dialects can be considered AbstandsprachenI mean, "self-governance." However, they can also be seen as dialects of a single language, assuming the existence of a common standard language through which communication is possible. Such a situation is called diglosia.
• Although more modernly the intermediate dialects that allow to build the linguistic chain tend to disappear, the Romance languages of Portugal, Spain, France and Italy have been proposed as an example of geolectal continuum. However, to follow the chain of mutually intelligible dialects does not serve any way. Between Portugal and France, the chain of dialects must pass, necessarily through the Galician language, through the Asturleonian linguistic domain in its three dialects: Western, Central and Eastern, by the Cantabri, and later by the area of Castilian, going to the Aragonese and the Catalan language, which connects with the area of the West.
• Turkic languages.
• Indoirania languages.
• The Arabic language varieties.
• Chinese languages or dialects.
• Continuun macedonio-serbocroata-Sloveno.
• Eskimo languages form a dialectal chain along the Canadian Arctic, in which each variety is highly understandable with the nearby varieties located in general to the east and west, but in which extreme varieties such as the inupiatum of Alaska is not understandable with the Nunatsiavummiut of the North of Labrador, although there is intelligibility of these varieties with other intermediate varieties.
• The southern paiute encompasses a set of dialects that form, in fact, a set of dialects of the utoaztec family that form a dialectal complex.
• The mixer.
• The breed between the Algonquin languages.

Other continua

Sometimes the geographic definition of geolectal continuum has been extended to other contexts, such as diastratic varieties or social variants. With this, it is possible to define a sociolectal continuum .

Examples of sociolectal continuums would be:

• The one given in many Creole languages lacking prestige and the most prestigious related language.
• The one between the standard American English and the African American Vernacular Englishebonics). Some speakers can easily travel the continuum depending on the topic and the context.