advergence

English

Etymology

Coined by evolutionary biologists L. P. Brower and J. van Z. Brower in 1972 for the paper "Parallelism, convergence, divergence, and the new concept of advergence in the evolution of mimicry" on the pattern of convergence, substituting ad- for con- to emphasize the one-sidedness of the approach. Borrowed into linguistics by Peter Auer in 1998. By surface analysis, ad- +‎ verge +‎ -ence, from Latin vergere (“to turn, incline”), from Proto-Italic *wergō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wérg-e-ti, from *h₂werg- (“to turn”).

Noun

advergence (uncountable)

1. (biology) The evolution of a mimic to resemble its model more closely.
2. (linguistics) The evolution of a dialect to resemble the standard language more closely.
   • 2005, Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts, Perspectives on Variation, page 25:

     The main process in regiolect formation is dialect-to-standard advergence, but there are two caveats to this statement.

   • 2010, Peter Auer, Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Theories and Methods, page 290:

     Horizontal convergence that causes divergence in a part of a formerly uniform dialect area can be, and often is, accompanied by vertical convergence, i.e., by advergence to the standard language.

Related terms

• convergence
• divergence