Resumen de Language ‘contact universals’ along the Germanic‐Romanic linguistic border
At the centre of contact‐linguistic research in Europe at present are those language‐conflict zones where it will be shown whether a typology of language contacts can be formed at all, or whether inner‐ and outer‐linguistic universals dependent on contact can be worked out. A broad empirical basis would be a necessary requirement for this.
The language frontier and transitional zones along the Germanic‐Romanic linguistic border occupy a particularly important position in the field of language‐contact research. The northern branches of this linguistic frontier in Belgium and north‐western France probably belong to the diachronic‐dialectological and most thoroughly investigated contact areas of Europe. The legal establishment of an inner‐Belgian language frontier permits a systematic progression for the three languages in question: French, Dutch, German and their dialects. Field linguistics, general sociolinguistics and language‐sociological investigation material (above all, field research), is available for German‐speaking Belgium in sufficient amounts so that linguistic phenomena such as transference and interference and norms of linguistic consciousness have become the centre of interest.
