The purpose of the present chapter is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to explore how the processes discussed in the preceding chapters relate to what one may wish to refer to summarily as sprachbund linguistics; on the other hand, we will be concerned with the question of what the study of contact-induced grammaticalization can contribute to a better understanding of geographically defined linguistic areas. To this end, we will attempt a review of some main works on areal relationship in section 5.1, at least as far as these works relate to the subject matter of this book, and in section 5.2 we will discuss the term “grammaticalization area” and its relevance for understanding some properties of linguistic areas.

Types of linguistic areas

A number of terms have been proposed to define classes of languages that, as a result of language contact, have come to share a number of features; we will refer to such classes summarily as linguistic areas. There are many kinds of conceivable linguistic areas; prototypically, three main types may be distinguished. First, there are linguistic areas defined by the presence of a limited set of linguistic properties; we will refer to such areas as sprachbunds (see section 5.1.1). Second, there are areas that are characterized by the fact that the languages concerned exhibit a high degree of mutual intertranslatability, discussed below under the label of metatypy (section 5.1.2).