sprachbund

Meaning

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.

Origin

• Borrowed from German Sprachbund, from Sprache (ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *sprāku) + Bund (from binden, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰendʰ-). 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, which he had introduced in a 1923 article.