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Linguistic Diversity (Hardcover)
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Linguistic Diversity (Hardcover)
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There are some 6,500 different languages in the world, belonging to
around 250 distinct families, and conforming to numerous
grammatical types. This text investigates and seeks to explain that
diversity. Daniel Nettle examines why diversity evolved at all,
given that the biological mechanisms underlying language are the
same in all normal human beings. He then considers whether the
distribution of diversity may be linked with the major patterns of
human geography and prehistory. Human languages and language
families are not distributed evenly: there are few in Eurasia
compared to the thousands in Australasia, the Pacific, and the
Americas. There is also a marked correlation between bio- and
linguistic diversity. The author explains how and why this
diversity arose. To do so he returns to the earliest origins of
language, reconstructing the processes of linguistic change and
diffusion that occurred when humans first filled the continents
and, thousands of years later, turned to agriculture. He concludes
by examining the causes of linguistic mortality, and why the number
of the world's languages may halve before 2100. The text draws on
work in anthropology, linguistics, geography, ar
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