大陆

次大陆

??

岛屿

小岛

就大小而言，在(次)大陆和岛屿之间是否存在陆块过渡?< / p >

人们似乎普遍认为大陆本身并不是岛屿。这是酒吧问答题中常见的困惑，人们争论世界上最大的岛屿是格陵兰岛还是澳大利亚，还是欧洲、亚洲和非洲大陆的总和(如果周围有特别迂迂的人的话)。

所以问题归结为“什么是大陆”?它更像是一个政治/历史/地理单位，而不是一个拓扑单位。如果大陆是用海岸线划分的，那么欧洲、非洲和亚洲将是一体的。此外，许多不在大陆架上的大洋中小岛最终会成为大陆。人们很容易认为大陆与构造板块有关，但即使我们忽略大陆中部断层和“复杂”地区，欧洲和亚洲也很难分开....目前认为的六大洲是在板块构造理论提出之前形成的。维基百科上有一篇关于大陆之间历史边界的有趣文章; the one between Europe and Asia is especially ambiguous.

I'm not aware of any definition of "subcontinent", and have never heard this term used for anything other than the area around India, so I suspect this is also a political and historical term.

So to answer the question: No, there is not a size-based distinction between islands and continents, although the smallest continent is indeed bigger than the largest island. The definition of an island would seem to be "a landmass surrounded by water that is not thought of as a continent".

As for "islet", again, I'm not aware of any formal definition. However, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea does distinguish between islands and "rocks", where the latter are islets that are too small to be habitable. This is an important definition, because unlike islands, rocks are not considered when defining a nation's exclusive economic zone (the area in which they may control who fishes, drills for oil, and so forth).