Areal feature
Linguistic feature arising through language contact rather than common descent / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area,[1] particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, i.e. a common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted with lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see "sprachbund").
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Genetic relationships are represented in the family tree model of language change, and areal relationships are represented in the wave model.