Language splits and bundled isoglosses

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
>I invite Roger to clarify what his concern is in distinguishing "language"
>diversification from dialect diversification.  Is it the emergence of
>literary dialects, or what?
 
 
        Thankyou for the invitation - if the speakers involved are
geographically contiguous, we could use the following criterion: cognate
*languages* will have many isoglosses bundled along the same line (which
might coincide with a political boundary, or might not); dialect
diversification *within the same language* is likely to involve a
dialect continuum, with many isoglosses, but which rarely coincide
geographically in this way. (The emergence of Literary standards can
lead to bundling, rather than being caused by them.)
        This is a suggestion, not a dogmatic view.
        Alexis asked how I applied this to unwritten languages; I would
suggest that the language-internal dialect continuum is the default
case, so that language-splits should imply loss of physical contact
(such as population movements, or perhaps the fact that a once easily
traversable sea had become a hostile pirate-infested environment ....)
Perhaps I can recommend here the proceedings of a historical
sociolinguistics conference held in Denmark in 1994, published as "The
Origins and Developments of Emigrant Languages", ed. H. F. Nielsen and
L. Schosler, Odense University Press, 1996, ISBN 87-7838-226-2; we
didn't come to a consensus on this, really, but there's good food for
thought here.
                        RW