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Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics
This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another.
- GenresLinguistics
470 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
14 people want to read
About the author
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
45 books4 followersAlexandra Aikhenvald is a leading linguist and expert in linguistic typology and the Arawak language family, particularly the Tariana language of the Brazilian Amazon. Born in Russia, she studied at Moscow State University, mastering numerous ancient and modern languages, including Hittite, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Yiddish. She earned her Cand. Sc. degree with research on Berber languages and published the first Russian grammar of modern Hebrew. Between 1989 and 1992, she conducted fieldwork in Brazil, learning several Indigenous languages and producing a grammar of Tariana. After moving to Australia in 1993, she held academic positions at ANU, La Trobe, and James Cook University, where she co-founded major research centers in linguistic typology and language and culture. Aikhenvald has worked extensively on language contact, classifiers, evidentials, and grammars of understudied languages. She has authored influential works on Manambu and Warekena and compiled a Tariana–Portuguese dictionary. She speaks numerous languages, including Tok Pisin, and has been recognized internationally, being elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1999), awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship (2012), and elected to the Academia Europaea (2021). She is currently a professorial research fellow at Central Queensland University.
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July 1, 2014
This volume edited by Sasha Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon collects most of the papers presented at a 1998 workshop at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Australia.
Most of the papers presented at the workshop engaged in some way with Dixon's theory of "punctuated equilibrium", which had been introducted the year before in his essay The Rise and Fall of Languages. The expert on Australian aboriginal languages had long been struck by how Australian languages show shared features across the continent, but no higher-level genetic grouping can be determined. According to his view of history, languages have undergone thousands of years of relative equilibrium marked by areal convergence, "punctuated" by sudden cases of language change due to migrations, natural disasters, etc. This theory is amply summarized in Aikhenvald and Dixon's introduction to this volume.
Peter Bellwood is an archaeologist with an interest in historical linguistics. His paper "Archaeology and language family origins" suggests that the "punctuation" which lead to the rise of a handful of major language families worldwide several millennia ago was the development of agriculture. Unfortunately, he thinks that IE spread with the first farmers out of Anatolia, and I (and most linguists) don't believe that this theory holds water.
Calvert Watkins contributes a paper on Anatolian as a linguistic area that offers evidence against Dixon's theory. He describes convergence in phonology and syntax between IE and non-IE languages of Anatolia in the second millennium BC, and between Anatolian languages and Greek in the first millennium BC. He takes issue with Dixon's hypothesis by noting that IE Anatolian and non-IE Anatolian converged rapidly over a period of less than five centuries, that is, during the "punctuation" of IE languages entering the area, and not during a long period of "equilibrium".
Other papers deal with language families somewhat outside my ken. Of course, even if Dixon is wrong about this particular theory of his, he has much insight into Australian aboriginal languages. He contributes a paper on the Australian linguistic area and his colleague Alan Dench on Pilbara specifically. Geoffrey Haig examines diffusion in present-day East Anatolia, not just pan-Anatolian features but Turkish-Laz and Turkish-Iranian contacts in particular. Sasha Aikhenvald, who is especially interested in languages of Amazonia, writes on problems of subgrouping in North Arawak. Malcolm Ross contributes a paper on contact-induced change in Oceanic languages of northwest Melanesia.
Heine & Kuteva discuss convergence and divergence in Africa, while Gerrit J. Dimmendaal gives his own perspectives on areal convergence versus genetic inheritance.
The Sino-Tibetan family is investigated in two papers. Randy J. LaPolla looks at the role of migration and language contact in Sino-Tibetan, while Hilary Chapell writes on language contact and areal diffusion within Sinitic specifically.
A couple of papers are concerned with Southeast Asia. James A. Matisoff writes on prosodic diffusibility in the area, while N. J. Enfield points to parallel polyfunctionality of the verb 'acquire'.
Most of the papers presented at the workshop engaged in some way with Dixon's theory of "punctuated equilibrium", which had been introducted the year before in his essay The Rise and Fall of Languages. The expert on Australian aboriginal languages had long been struck by how Australian languages show shared features across the continent, but no higher-level genetic grouping can be determined. According to his view of history, languages have undergone thousands of years of relative equilibrium marked by areal convergence, "punctuated" by sudden cases of language change due to migrations, natural disasters, etc. This theory is amply summarized in Aikhenvald and Dixon's introduction to this volume.
Peter Bellwood is an archaeologist with an interest in historical linguistics. His paper "Archaeology and language family origins" suggests that the "punctuation" which lead to the rise of a handful of major language families worldwide several millennia ago was the development of agriculture. Unfortunately, he thinks that IE spread with the first farmers out of Anatolia, and I (and most linguists) don't believe that this theory holds water.
Calvert Watkins contributes a paper on Anatolian as a linguistic area that offers evidence against Dixon's theory. He describes convergence in phonology and syntax between IE and non-IE languages of Anatolia in the second millennium BC, and between Anatolian languages and Greek in the first millennium BC. He takes issue with Dixon's hypothesis by noting that IE Anatolian and non-IE Anatolian converged rapidly over a period of less than five centuries, that is, during the "punctuation" of IE languages entering the area, and not during a long period of "equilibrium".
Other papers deal with language families somewhat outside my ken. Of course, even if Dixon is wrong about this particular theory of his, he has much insight into Australian aboriginal languages. He contributes a paper on the Australian linguistic area and his colleague Alan Dench on Pilbara specifically. Geoffrey Haig examines diffusion in present-day East Anatolia, not just pan-Anatolian features but Turkish-Laz and Turkish-Iranian contacts in particular. Sasha Aikhenvald, who is especially interested in languages of Amazonia, writes on problems of subgrouping in North Arawak. Malcolm Ross contributes a paper on contact-induced change in Oceanic languages of northwest Melanesia.
Heine & Kuteva discuss convergence and divergence in Africa, while Gerrit J. Dimmendaal gives his own perspectives on areal convergence versus genetic inheritance.
The Sino-Tibetan family is investigated in two papers. Randy J. LaPolla looks at the role of migration and language contact in Sino-Tibetan, while Hilary Chapell writes on language contact and areal diffusion within Sinitic specifically.
A couple of papers are concerned with Southeast Asia. James A. Matisoff writes on prosodic diffusibility in the area, while N. J. Enfield points to parallel polyfunctionality of the verb 'acquire'.
Displaying 1 of 1 review