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Investigating Language Isolates: Typological and diachronic perspectives
Edited by Iker Salaberri, Dorota Krajewska, Ekaitz Santazilia and Eneko Zuloaga
[Typological Studies in Language 135] 2025
► pp. 2–19

Introduction

State of the art of research on language isolates

ORCID logo | University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
ORCID logo | University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
ORCID logo | Public University of Navarre (UPNA)
ORCID logo | University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
This paper discusses the issues faced by linguists analyzing language isolates, namely their definition, recovering their histories, and commonly used methods that implicitly rely on non-isolate status. This is followed by a critical review of recent approaches meant to overcome these issues. We argue that the techniques used to retrieve the history of non-isolate languages are also valid for isolates, including the comparative method applied to dialects, internal reconstruction, the philological study of texts, the study of past and present situations of language contact, and typological comparison. Nevertheless, we contend that new methodologies should be developed and combined with the already existing ones. We conclude by summarizing how the papers included in this volume contribute to the study of isolates.
Keywords: language isolates, research methodologies, typology, language contact, historical linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Problems relating to the study of language isolates
    • 2.1Defining language isolates
    • 2.2Recovering the history of language isolates
  • 3.Recent advances in the study of language isolates
  • 4.Contributions to this volume
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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