THE DIFFUSION AND MOSAICS
OF LANGUAGES
Tracing Linguistic Diversification
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Diffusion of languages
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Sound shifts
William Jones and ancient Sanskrit
Jacob Grimm and consonants
From Jones and Grimm to the (Proto) IndoEuropean language
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This concept had major implications creating
major research tasks
The Language Tree
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Divergence
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August Schleicher
Languages to dialects
Dialects isolated
becoming discrete
languages
Language tree model
The Language Tree
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Convergence
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Long-isolated languages making contact
Human mobility complicates language study
Languages and relocation diffusion
Replacement
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Replacement or modification of language by stronger
invaders of a less advanced people goes on today
No reason to believe it has not happened ever since
humans began to use language
Theories of Language Diffusion
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Roots
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Proto-language had words for landscape features,
certain vegetation
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Indicators of where a language may have developed
Conquest theory
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Somewhere north of the Black Sea in the vast
steppes of Ukraine and Russia
> 5000 years ago, used horses, developed the
wheel, and traded
Theories of Language Diffusion
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Agriculture theory
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Source area in Anatolia, Turkey
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Few words for plains but many for high-relief
landforms
Non-plains-dwelling animals and trees
Mesopotamian Cultural Hearth
Support for the theory
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Distance decay
Agricultural Theory
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Drawbacks of the theory
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Not much farming in Anatolia
The Search For The Superfamily
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Renfrew’s agricultural hearths model
Russian scholars long interested
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Nostratic
The Search For The Superfamily
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Nostratic
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Vocabulary
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No names for domestic plants or animals
Hunter-gatherers, ~ 14,000 years ago
Possible ancestral language for many other languages
Links widely separated languages
Perhaps a direct successor of a proto-world language
Diffusion to the Pacific
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When populated by people?
Diffusion into the Pacific north of Indonesia and
New Guinea
Austronesian
Malay-Polynesian
Speed of diffusion amazing considering the
fragmented Pacific realm
Most of Polynesia settled within several
centuries
Diffusion to The Americas
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Diffusion in the Americas
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Dominated by Indo-European languages
Pre-Columbian populations quite low
If Bering land-bridge hypothesis, then most intricately
divided branch of language tree
The Greenberg hypothesis
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3 families of indigenous American languages
Implies a period longer than the (generally) accepted
12,000-to-13,000-year-ago immigration into the
Americas
Influences on
Individual Languages
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Individual tongues
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Contact important for non-written languages
Three critical components have influenced the
world's linguistic mosaic:
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Literacy
Technology
Political organization
Influences on Individual Languages
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Printing press
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Germany 1588
Easier to publish texts
Rise of national states
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Integrated state territory
Common linguistic influences via interaction
MODERN LANGUAGE MOSAICS
Changing Cultural Composition
in the United States
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Hispanics population on the rise
An “official” second language?
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Even divides Hispanic communities
Hispanic policy organization report, 1990
Early European immigrants faced language
barrier…
Language and Culture
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Current debates
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Language vs. cultural preservation
English = international communication standard
Some countries have made English (or another
language) their official language
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Neocolonialism to some
Emotional attachment important
What is the US’s official language?
Language and Trade
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The Esperanto experiment
Lingua franca
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Linguistic convergence of Frankish, Italian, Greek,
Spanish, and Arabic
Today’s usage of “lingua franca”
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Swahili has become the lingua franca of East Africa
In West Africa Hausa is a regional tongue
Language and Trade
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Creolization
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“Pidgin”
Sometimes a mother tongue
Difficult distinguishing between them & dialects
Multilingualism
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Few true monolingual states left
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Japan, Uruguay, Venezuela, Iceland, Portugal,
Poland, and Lesotho
Multilingual states
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Linguistic fragmentation can reflect cultural
pluralism
Multilingualism
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Regional expression
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Examples:
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Switzerland
Russia
Andean Cultures
Multilingualism
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Canada
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French & English
speaking areas
Still divided
Multilingualism
Belgium
 Dutch-speaking and
French-speaking regions
 Brussels officially
bilingual, but majority
speak French
 Reflects 19th century
efforts to build an
integrated state
 Linguistic partition in
1920s
 For Flemish identity
 Language regions tend to
foster regionalism
Multilingualism
Nigeria
 A colonial creation
 Three major regional
languages
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230 established tongues
English as “official”
language
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Repercussions?
Official languages
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Serve different purposes
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Enhance internal communication and interaction
Colonial influence
Official language can cause problems
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Hindi example
US official language? None!
Toponymy
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The systematic study of place names
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Reveal a lot about a culture
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Examples?
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Why, AZ; Nothing, AZ; Ajo, AZ; Marana, AZ
– Peru, ME; Bolivia, SC
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Two part names
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Many place names consist of two parts
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A specific or given part
Generic or classifying part
E.g., Pennsylvania (Penn’s Forest)
Toponymy
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Taxonomy of Toponymy
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Historian George Stewart classified place names into ten
categories
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Descriptive
Associative
Incident
Possessive
Commendatory
Commemorative
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LA (El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de
Porciuncula)
Folk-etymology
Manufactured
Mistake
So-called Shift names
Toponymy
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Changing place names
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Elicit strong passions
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Changing city or town names often more difficult than
changing in territory names
Post-Soviet Union
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E.g., post-colonial African countries; Burma to Myanmar;
Siam to Thailand
Thousands of places were renamed
Many bitter arguments
South Africa today...
Language and The Global
Cultural Mosaic
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African Storyteller; Gaelic Bard; Troubadour
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Tales contain history and psyche of the people
Language can reveal how people view reality
Language and religion are two cornerstones of
culture
Discussion Question, set #1
Language divergence involves the
differentiation of languages over time and
space.
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Where in North America is language divergence
in progress today?
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What geographic factors contribute to this
process here (in N.A.) and elsewhere?
Discussion Question, set #2
Over the more than two centuries of its existence,
the US has been a largely English-speaking
country. For African-Americans, EuropeanAmericans, and Asian-Americans, English
became the first (often the only) language.
Today, Spanish is challenging this English
monopoly.
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What geographic factors play major roles in this
process? How? Why?