sprachbund
Syllables: sprach·bund/ˈspɹɑːkbʊnd/US/ˈspɹɑkbʊnd/
sprachbund noun: a group of languages sharing a number of areal features (similar grammar, vocabulary, etc.) which are primarily due to language contact rather than cognation.
Noun (1)
sprachbund (plural sprachbunds or sprachbünde)
- A group of languages sharing a number of areal features (similar grammar, vocabulary, etc.) which are primarily due to language contact rather than cognation.
- The introduction of the new term Proto-Munda is justified by the fact that, as early as the Vedic period, the Munda languages had departed considerably from the Austro-Asiatic type of language and developed a character of their own brought about by a number of dialectal phonetic changes and the...1948, F[ranciscus] B[ernardus] J[acobus] Kuiper, “Introduction”, in Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit (Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe...
- […] Certainly it is 'nicer' to define a sprachbund by what appear to be exclusively shared features with differentiate it from its neighbors – just as it is 'nicer' to be able to define a dialect by a set of innovations which clearly mark it off from other, related dialects. In the case of dialect...1988, Jacek Fisiak, editor, Historical Dialectology: Regional and Social (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs; 37), New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 308
- Synonyms:
- area of linguistic convergence, diffusion area, language crossroads, linguistic area
Noun (2) capitalized: Sprachbund
Sprachbund (plural Sprachbunds or Sprachbünde)
- Alternative letter-case form of sprachbund.
- The linguist reader will recognize that the Takia/Waskia, Mixe Basque/ Gascon, Romansch/Swiss German and Sauris German/Friulian pairs each form a small Sprachbund ('language alliance'). Probably the best-known Sprachbund consists of modern Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and the southern Slav languages...1997, Malcolm Ross, “Social Networks and Kinds of Speech-Community Event”, in Roger Blench, Matthew Spriggs, editors, Archaeology and Language I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations (One...
- This is the type of sociolinguistic situation in which a Sprachbund, or linguistic area, is likely to emerge. This is how the Balkan linguistic area came into being: during the Middle Ages, several linguistic communities were interspersed in an area which was never subjected to strong political...2007, Ranko Matasović [author], edited by [Per] Sture Ureland, [R.] Anthony Lodge, and Stefan Pugh, Language Contact and Minority Languages on the Littorals of Europe (Studies in Eurolinguistics; 5)...
Examples of sprachbund in a sentence
- The linguist reader will recognize that the Takia/Waskia, Mixe Basque/Gascon, Romansch/Swiss German and Sauris German/Friulian pairs each form a small Sprachbund ('language alliance').1997, Malcolm Ross, “Social Networks and Kinds of Speech-Community Event”, in Roger Blench, Matthew Spriggs, editors, Archaeology and...
- Substantial work has been done to define sprachbunds, with the result that there now are a few regions in all major macro-regions of the world that can be defined in terms of language contact.2005, Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva, “On Linguistic Areas”, in Language Contact and Grammatical Change (Cambridge Approaches to Language...
- The research program took shape after the Pragian structuralists made public their definition of the concept of Sprachbund.2013, Thomas Stolz, “Contemporary Europe”, in Competing Comparative Constructions in Europe (Studia Typologica; 13), [Berlin]: Akademie...
Synonyms of sprachbund
- area of linguistic convergence
- diffusion area
- language crossroads
- linguistic area
Forms of sprachbund
| plural | sprachbunds |
|---|---|
| plural | sprachbünde |
| alternative form | Sprachbund |
| plural | Sprachbunds |
| plural | Sprachbünde |
Origin of sprachbund
Borrowed from German Sprachbund (literally “language alliance, language association”), from Sprache (“language; way of speaking, speech”) (ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *sprāku (“language; speech”)) + Bund (“alliance”) (from binden (“to bind, to tie up”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰendʰ- (“to bind”)). The German word was coined by Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890–1938) in a paper he presented to the inaugural International Congress of Linguists in 1928 as a calque of the Russian term языково́й сою́з (jazykovój sojúz, literally “language union”), which he had introduced in a 1923 article.
Questions about sprachbund
- What does sprachbund mean?
- Sprachbund means a group of languages sharing a number of areal features (similar grammar, vocabulary, etc.) which are primarily due to language contact rather than cognation.
- How do you use sprachbund in a sentence?
- The linguist reader will recognize that the Takia/Waskia, Mixe Basque/Gascon, Romansch/Swiss German and Sauris German/Friulian pairs each form a small Sprachbund ('language alliance').
- What part of speech is sprachbund?
- Sprachbund is a noun.
- How do you pronounce sprachbund?
- Sprachbund is pronounced /ˈspɹɑːkbʊnd/ (UK).
- What is the plural of sprachbund?
- The plural of sprachbund is sprachbunds.
Words near sprachbund in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sprachbund (page history and authors); Sprachbund (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sprachbund.wav.
Cite this entry: “sprachbund.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sprachbund. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.