Re: [tied] Re: Why did Proto-Germanic break up?

> The variuos Italian dialectal areas(north, middle, south, sicilian)
> are actually so different that they constitute different languages
> rather than dialects of the same language ....
> There must have been a great degree of isolation at on time for each
> area.

Not so much geographic isolation, as political separation. But despite the
feeling that the regional standards are all different, the local dialects do
still form a continuum. These mostly reflect the spread of innovations
from the centre, as Giuliane Bonfante has shown.

Peter