Linguistic area research has received ample attention in the last century. Nevertheless, methodology remains somewhat underdeveloped, and there seem to be few, if any, generalizations about the relation between the processes underlying area formation and their outcomes. The main challenge is that, in most cases, the past is not directly accessible and therefore has to be reconstructed. Linguistic area research, therefore, stands to gain immensely from a firm embedding into a framework that includes both other strands of contact linguistics and extra-linguistic disciplines to complete the picture.

Peer reviewed