Isogloss
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An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e.g. the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Major dialects are typically demarcated by whole bundles of isoglosses, e.g. the Benrath line that distinguishes High German from the other West Germanic languages; or the La Spezia-Rimini Line which divides the eastern Romance languages from the western ones. Undoubtedly, the largest well-known isogloss is the Centum-Satem isogloss, which traditionally separates the Indo-European languages into two distinct categories.
The name is inspired by contour lines or isopleths such as isobar, etc.; however, the isogloss separates rather than connects points of equal language (perhaps one could say it connects points of indefinite language).
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- An example of an isogloss in Southern England.
- Beyond the Isogloss: The Isograph in Dialect Topography: A discussion of the shortcomings and oversimplifications of using isoglosses.
- On Some Acoustic Correlates of Isoglossy, a humorous analysis of Russian isoglossy.
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