The Rise and Fall of Languages

Product Description


This book puts forward a new approach to language change, the punctuated equilibrium model. This is based on the premise that during most of the 100,000 or more years that humans have had language, states of equilibrum have existed during which linguistic features diffused across the languages in a given area so that they gradually converged on a common prototype. From time to time, the state of equilibrium would be punctuated, with the expansion and split of peoples and of languages. Most recently, as a result of European colonization and globalization of communication, many languages face imminent extinction.


Review


"This book is required reading for anyone seriously interested in what we can honestly recover from the past history of languages." James A. Matisoff, University of California, Berkeley

"This book will be seminal in bringing about a paradigm shift in historical linguistics." Randy J. LaPolla, Academia Sinica Taiwan and City University of Hong Kong


Book Description


This book puts forward a new way of looking at the emergence and development of human language since its beginnings over 100,000 years ago in terms of a state of equilibrium which was periodically 'punctuated'. Punctuations saw the expansion or split of peoples and of languages, most recently as a result of European colonisation and the globalisation of communication. Professor Dixon challenges many of the views currently held by linguists, archaeologists and geneticists, notably those concerning the usefulness of the 'family tree' model of language relationships and the recent speculation concerning the reconstruction of a 'proto-language'.


About the Author


R. M. W. Dixon is Director and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University.