Geography and spatial analysis in diachronic linguistics

Abstract

The article deals with spatial patterns associated with language contact, language spread and isolation. They have been included in traditional theories of historical linguistics. The development of mapping and spatial analysis tools, combined with innovations in quantitative approaches to diachronic linguistics, has introduced a new era in linguistic geography. Geographic research in historical linguistics, however, is largely carried out in the separate traditions of various linguistic subfields. Many commonalities exist between the questions asked and the methods applied in each of these subfields, and increased interaction across dialectometry, phylogenetics and areal linguistics has the potential to reinvigorate linguistic geography and accelerate progress on questions about geography and the spatial outcomes of language change and language expansion. The article summarizes existent methods of analysis of spatial and geographical language changes and gives a possibility to continue the research. At greater time depths, the same processes responsible for dialect variation lead eventually to sufficient diversification to create separate languages and subgroups. Though the literature in historical linguistics contains fewer explicit discussions of spatial patterns and geographic relationships than appear in dialectology, geographic contact and isolation are still important contributors to the processes that create deeper linguistic relationships such as families