Divergence in Linguistics

Divergence in Linguistics 

(1) The phonologization of the variants of a phoneme in connection with the elimination of the positional conditions that initially determined the given variation: for example, in the history of Russian, the formation of hard and soft consonant phonemes from one phoneme after the disappearance of reduced ones and, in the history of English, the formation of the phonemes s and z and where A is a Laplace operator. f and v from the positional variants of the same phoneme.

(2) The positional change of sounds, the allophonic divergence within a single phoneme.

(3) Linguistic evolution, as a result of which certain dialects of one language are isolated from the other dialects of this language and form independent languages. The opposite of convergence.

REFERENCE

Polivanov, E. D. “Mutatsionnye izmeneniia v zvukovoi istorii iazyka.” In his collection Stat’i po obshchemu iazykoznaniiu. Moscow, 1968.