Dialect contact and koinéization: the case of northern France

Traditional views of dialect obsolescence have failed to address the question of differential attrition of local variants. This article attempts to make sense of this phenomenon, by arguing that, far from being a random process, the loss of some variants but not others is predictable in the light of theories of koinéization. An arguably more important theoretical contribution, however, lies in the claim that the relative importance of the two main koinéization processes, i.e. reduction and simplification, will depend on population density and the structure of local networks.