Abstract
This paper makes a contribution to phonological typology by investigating the distribution of affricate-rich languages in Eurasia. It shows that affricate-rich and affricate-dense languages cluster areally within Eurasia and have area-specific histories. In particular, the affricate-rich areas of western Eurasia – a ‘European’ area and a Caucasian area – are not the result of contact-induced sound changes or borrowing, while the two affricate-rich areas of eastern Eurasia – the Hindukush area and the Eastern Himalayan area – are the result of contact. Specifically, affricate-dense areas depend on the emergence of retroflex affricates. Moreover, languages outside these affricate-dense areas tend to lose retroflex affricates.
Original language | American English |
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Pages (from-to) | 562-599 |
Number of pages | 38 |
Journal | Studies in Language |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Keywords
- Affricates
- Areal linguistics
- Areal sound change
- Consonant inventories
- Distributional typology
- Historical phonology
- Language contact
- Language typology
- Phonology