In:Processes of Change: Studies in Late Modern and Present-Day English
Edited by Sandra Jansen and Lucia Siebers
[Studies in Language Variation 21] 2019
► pp. 247–260
Chapter 13Borders and language
Published online: 13 August 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.21.13cha
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.21.13cha
We expect to find dialect differences dispersed along a geographic continuum, under normal circumstances.
That is, unless some contingency disrupts the geography, we expect to find only minor differences in the speech of one
community and the communities on either side. The differences proliferate as distance increases, so that dialect
differences are greater in communities further away. This pattern of dispersion is known as a dialect continuum (Chambers and Trudgill 1998: 5–7). It is a model that has not aroused much
critical scrutiny presumably because it follows from the common-sense observation that people tend to speak more like
their neighbors than people further away. The most rigorous examination of the concept, the dialectometric analysis of
a chain of Dutch villages by Heeringa and Nerbonne (2001), corroborated the
main tenets of the model.
Article outline
- 1.Continua and dis-continua
- 2.Borders interrupted and continuous
- 3.Borders as bastions
- 4.When is the border permeable?
- 5.Fences and neighbors
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