Maritime and continental orientation

Increased maritime circulation is not only reflected in material and economic history, but also in linguistic history. This linguistic history has been fossilized in similarities and differences in current language varieties: maritime isoglosses. We will research this using Dutch and German varieties. Older and newer connections exist side by side and can be recognized throughout the unique course of isoglosses: lexical isoglosses and deep, morpho-syntactic isoglosses. This raises many questions: What triggers the transfer from maritime to continental? What are the social and linguistic consequences? As a working hypothesis, this switch from maritime to continental is perceived on a local scale as “migration”. The model for this switch can potentially be expanded to include modern migration patterns from (North) Africa to Europe.