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An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistics feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a subject of study in dialectology, in which they demarcate the differences between regional of a language; in areal linguistics, in which they represent the extent of borrowing of features between language contact with one another; and in the wave model of historical linguistics, in which they indicate the similarities and differences between members of a language family.
Major are typically demarcated by bundles of isoglosses, such as the Benrath line that distinguishes High German from the other West Germanic languages and the La Spezia–Rimini Line that divides the Northern Italian languages and Romance languages west of Italy from Central Italian dialects and Romance languages east of Italy. However, an individual isogloss may or may not have any coterminus with a language border. For example, the front-rounding of /y/ cuts across France and Germany, while the /y/ is absent from Italian and Spanish words that are with the /y/-containing French words.
One of the best-known isoglosses is the centum–satem isogloss.
Similar to an isogloss, an isograph is a distinguishing feature of a writing system. Both concepts are also used in historical linguistics.
In some branches (for example Ancient Greek, Italic languages and Germanic), the palatals merged with the velars: PIE "tremble (inwardly)" became Latin c upiō "desire" and "hundred" became Latin centum (pronounced kentum); but "interrogative pronoun" became quō "how? where?". They are known as centum branches, named after the Latin word for hundred.
In other branches (for example, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian), the labiovelars merged with the velars: PIE became Vedic Sanskrit k opáyati "shaken" and became Avestan kō "who?"; but became Avestan satəm. They are known as satem branches, after the Avestan word for hundred.
Since the Balto-Slavic family, the Indo-Iranian family, and the other satem families are spoken in adjacent geographic regions, they can be grouped by an isogloss: a geographic line separating satem branches on one side from centum branches on the other.
Similarly, Proto-Semitic ā becomes ō in the Canaanite dialects of Northwest Semitic. Within the and dialects of Northwest Semitic, the historic ā is preserved. Thus, an ancient Northwest Semitic language whose historic ā became ō can be classed as part of the Canaanite branch of Northwest Semitic.
Such features can be used as data of fundamental importance for the purposes of linguistic classification.
For example, a distinguishing feature of the Iron Age Old Hebrew script is that the letters bet, dalet, ayin and resh do not have an open head, but contemporary Aramaic language has open-headed forms. Similarly, the bet of Old Hebrew has a distinctive stance (it leans to the right), but the bet of the Aramaic and Phoenician scripts series has a different stance (in both, it leans to the left).
In 2006, Christopher Rollston suggested using the term isograph to designate a feature of the script that distinguishes it from a related script series, such as a feature that distinguishes the script of Old Hebrew from Old Aramaic and Phoenician.
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