Toward a systematic method for identifying language areas

Abstract

Macroareas are geographical areas used in typological research for grouping variables of interest. In linguistic typology, languages in a given macroarea are considered to have potential for contact, in contrast to those outside the area, where contact is less likely. Along with language family membership, macroareas are used as controls for models in linguistic typology, in an attempt to address the problem of autocorrelation - the observation that historical developments or typological patterns may be due to contact between neighboring languages and/or inheritance from a common ancestral language. Macroareas are therefore a central aspect of research that seeks to separate universal properties of language from local (or language-specific) properties. Existing macroareas largely depend on expert determinations of what constitutes a geographical area of potential contact, and to date have mainly aligned with continents or landmasses (Hammarström and Donohue 2014; Nichols, Witzlack-Makarevich, and Bickel 2013). While there are various historical and theoretical reasons for these groupings, there as of yet has been no systematic approach to identifying such areas for a given region. This paper attempts to address such a gap and move beyond macroarea to identification of language areas of relatively arbitrary size, presenting a simple geographical clustering method for identifying groupings over any area. The method produces a set of worldwide macroareas that largely align with existing groupings, as well as local groupings for a well-known sprachbund.