2 - Research Context

Summary

This chapter lays out the history of research on areality in northern Europe, with particular attention to phonological features and the relationship between the observed convergences and language contact. It covers the origins of typological thinking and some theories of contact and substrate in nineteenth-century historical linguistics; the rise of ‘holistic’ typological approaches that would go on to play an important role in how twentieth-century scholars approached the issues central to the book; the development of areal linguistics by the Prague School and the importance of phonology to this endeavour; the contribution of Norwegian Celticists to many of the problems discussed in the book; the important work of Heinrich Wagner, who posited a phonological ‘linguistic landscape’ in northern Europe; responses to Wagner’s work; approaches problematizing contact origins of the features discussed; and the current state of the field.