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many languages
in the world?
Richard McGinn
Linguistics Department
Why are there so many languages in the world?
Two-part answer:
1. ??
2. ??
Why are there so many languages in the world?
Two-part answer:
1. PEOPLE MOVE
2. ??
Why are there so many languages in the world?
Two-part answer:
2. LANGUAGES CHANGE
People Move: Diamond-Bellwood
Hypothesis
Link is here. Jared Diamond and Peter
Bellwood team up to provide an interdisciplinary
hypothesis concerning the history of human
migrations and the major reasons peoples,
cultures and especially technologies can differ
so dramatically. Their data draws on findings in
linguistics, archeology, agriculture and animal
husbandry.
FIVE HUMAN
MIGRATIONS
OUT OF AFRICA
Earliest Migrations 100 K – 40 K bp
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (2000)
Migrations To 10 K bp
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (2000)
Farmers / Fishermen in SEA
and the Pacific: 6000 – 1000 bp
Proto-Sapiens
Merritt Ruhlen 1994
Why are there so many languages in the world?
2. Languages Change
Theory of Divergence
(Crowley, p. 23 & pp. 226-238)
1. Languages change
systematically.
2. Barriers reduce the density of
intercommunication.
3. The changes are statistically
independent.
In 1786 Sir William Jones announced to the
Asiatick Society of Calcutta that Sanskrit
was related to Greek and Latin, touching off
what would come to be known as the
Neogrammarian movement away from
philology (the comparison of written texts) to
what we now consider linguistics (the study
of spoken languages). If you lived in 1786,
and you were presented with a large number
of cognates like the following, you would
likely also conclude that all these languages
must be related.
Some Indo-European Languages
Sanskrit Avestan Greek Latin Gothic English
pita pater pater fadar father
padam poda pedem fotu foot
bhratar phrater frater brothar brother
bharami barami phero fero baira bear
jivah jivo wiwos qius quick
‘living'
sanah hano henee senex sinista senile
virah viro wir wair were(-wolf)
'man'
tryah tris tres thri three
daśa deka decem taihun ten
śatam satem -katon centum hund(rath) hund(red)
TWO CLASSIFICATION
PROBLEMS
(Handouts)
Quote of the day:
“Most historical linguists have no
appreciation of the difference
between classification and
reconstruction.”
-- Merrit Ruhlen, The Origin of Language
(1994:127)
Two Fundamental Principles
of Historical Linguistics
Fundamental Principles
http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~clunis/wow/grimm/rev
erse-frames.html
Do the principles of sound
change and reconstruction
only apply to European
languages?
A good question once, now fully settled based on
200 years of research on the world’s languages.
King of Amerian Structuralism
One of Bloomfield’s (1925:130) many significant
accomplishments was his successful application of
the Regularity Hypothesis in the reconstruction of
Proto-Algonquin, to “dispose of the notion that the
usual processes of linguistic change were
suspended on the American continent.”
-- Robert W. Murray, The place of historical linguistics in the age of structuralism.
In Sylvain Auroux, ed. (2000). History of the language sciences, Chapter XXXVII,
p. 2437.
Revised Theory of Divergence
(Crowley, p. 23 & pp. 226-238)
WINTER 2010