Everything about Isogloss totally explained
An
isogloss is the geographical boundary or delineation of a certain
linguistic feature, for example the pronunciation of a
vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Major
dialects are typically demarcated by whole bundles of isoglosses, for example the
Benrath line that distinguishes
High German from the other
West Germanic languages; or the
La Spezia-Rimini Line which divides the eastern
Romance languages from the western ones. Undoubtedly, the largest well-known isogloss is the
Centum-Satem isogloss, which traditionally separates the
Indo-European languages into two distinct categories.
A major isogloss in American English has been identified as the
North-
Midland isogloss, which demarcates numerous linguistic features, including the
Northern Cities vowel shift: regions north of the line (including
western New York;
Cleveland, Ohio;
lower Michigan; northern
Illinois; and eastern
Wisconsin) are subject to the shift and regions south of the line (including
Pennsylvania, central and southern
Ohio, and most of
Indiana) are not.
The name is inspired by
contour lines or
isopleths such as
isobar, etc.; however, the isogloss separates rather than connects points of equal language (perhaps one could say it connects points of indefinite language).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Isogloss'.
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