[Lingtyp] Contact and convergence/divergence

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Ian – Obviously (right?), that’s going to depend on your definition of ‘convergence’. As far as I’m aware, there are four different factors that can cause two languages A and B to share a given feature. In no particular order:


  1.  Transmission (i.e., inheritance from a common ancestor);
  2.  Diffusion (i.e., contact, whether directly between A and B or via some intermediate C);
  3.  Parallel evolution;
  4.  Coincidence.

Adjudicating between (iii) and (iv) as causes responsible for any given shared property between A and B is something we’re arguably not (yet?) able to do empirically, so let’s ignore the difference between (iii) and (iv) for present purposes and treat them as a package.

Factor (i) can be eliminated simply by stipulating that ‘convergence’ is something we’re only going to consider for unrelated languages (although in reality contact-induced change of course happens among related languages just as much if not more as it does among unrelated ones).

The tough one seems to be to distinguish between (ii) and (iii)+(iv).

One possible solution would be to define ‘convergence’ as metatypy. If I replace ‘convergence’ with ‘metatypy’ in your first generalization, the generalization strikes me near-trivially true. That’s because I take it for granted that (iii)+(iv) couldn’t possibly account for metatypy.

But then we’d just have replaced one term with another. Besides, we’d still be lacking a definition for ‘divergence’.

Best – Juergen


Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Ian Joo <ian_joo at nucba.ac.jp>
Date: Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 01:59
To: <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Contact and convergence/divergence
Dear typologists,

I would like to know if you agree with the following statements:

1. contact is the necessary and sufficient explanation for convergence.
2. absence of contact is a sufficient (but not necessary) explanation for divergence.

I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts on why you agree or disagree.

>From Hong Kong,
Ian
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