Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

ISBN 10: 0199283087 / ISBN 13: 9780199283088

Published by Oxford University Press, GB, 2006

About this Item

Two languages can resemble each other in the categories, constructions, and types of meaning they use; and in the forms they employ to express these. Such resemblances may be the consequence of universal characteristics of language, of chance or coincidence, of the borrowing by one language of another's words, or of the diffusion of grammatical, phonetic, and phonological characteristics that takes place when languages come into contact. Languages sometimes show likeness because they have borrowed not from each other but from a third language. Languages that come from the same ancestor may have similar grammatical categories and meanings expressed by similar forms: such languages are said to be genetically affiliated. This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim (a) to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and (b) to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. The introduction outlines the issues that underlie these aims, introduces the chapters which follow, and comments on recurrent conclusions by the contributors. The problems are formidable and the pitfalls numerous: for example, several of the authors draw attention to the inadequacy of the family tree diagram as the main metaphor for language relationship. The authors range over Ancient Anatolia, Modern Anatolia, Australia, Amazonia, Oceania, Southeast and East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The book includes an archaeologist's view on what material evidence offers to explain cultural and linguistic change, and a general discussion of which kinds of linguistic feature can and cannot be borrowed. The chapters are accessibly-written and illustrated by twenty maps. The book will interest all students of the causes and consequences of language change and evolution.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780199283088

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, GB
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199283087
• ISBN 13: 9780199283088
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 711 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor of Lingusitics, The Cairns Institute, James Cook University. She worked in the North Africa and Middle East section of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and was then Professor of Linguistics at the Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina in Brazil before coming to Australia in 1994. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, grammars of Modern and Biblical Hebrew. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare, Warekena, and Tariana, in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Professor R. M. W. Dixon is Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University. He has written grammars of a number of Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiny), published one survey volume ('The Languages of Australia', 1980), and is currently working on a comprehensive areal study of all 247 languages of the continent. For the past nine years he has been working in the southern Amazonian jungle of Brazil, writing a grammar of Jarawara, and pursuing a comparative study of the Arawa language family.