Abstract
<jats:p> We present here the notion of ‘linguistic area’, for which we use the assimilated German loanword <jats:italic>Sprachbund</jats:italic> . We define a sprachbund as a set of two or more languages, generally unrelated or only distantly related from a genealogical standpoint, that are geographically connected and that show parallels in structure and lexicon that result from the bi‐ or multilingualism born of intense and intimate language contact. Although sprachbunds are found all over the world, with the regions of India and of Meso‐America being two particularly well‐recognized such language sets, we illustrate this notion with an in‐depth look at the Balkan sprachbund, comprising a subset of the languages spoken in southeastern Europe, as it is the best known and most thoroughly researched sprachbund. We give examples of the convergent features that characterize the Balkan sprachbund, covering features from the major sub‐domains of structure and grammar – phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – and on the lexical level, we introduce an innovation to the typology of loanwords which we refer to as ‘ERIC loans’, standing for those that are ‘Essentially Rooted In Conversation’. This type of loanword is well instantiated in the Balkans, and positing such a class of loanwords reflects our view that localized contact at the level of individual speaker‐to‐speaker interactions is crucial to the formation of a sprachbund. </jats:p>