Understanding How Migration Patterns Shaped Native Ethnicity, Language (fwd link)

[Zoe Tribur]

Interesting, but one question that I have is why you don't see 
large-scale language shift. Instead, you have "areal patterns" from 
long-term multilingualism. It's not just that there are lots of 
languages, it's the fact that there are so any language families that 
makes the Pacific Coast so interesting. Western China, for example, has 
lots of languages but far fewer language families. This kind of 
situation suggests that language shifts took place in the distant past, 
although another explanation is that these places were uninhabited when 
the first speakers of Tibeto-Burman or whatever showed up, and then they 
spread, but in some of these areas, the first explanation is more 
likely. So what was different about the Pacific Coast that people living 
there didn't switch languages? I'm guessing that the ecological 
conditions in which they lived might have something to do with it, 
allowing many groups to live side-by-side, but that can't be the whole 
story.


On 2013/08/20 14:04, Phil Cash Cash wrote:
> UNDERSTANDING HOW MIGRATION PATTERNS SHAPED NATIVE ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE
> 
>  August 20, 2013
> 
>  During the past 12,000 years, the rich diversity of Native American
> [1] ethnic and language groups of California took shape as migrating
> tribes. They settled first on the lush Pacific coast and then in
> progressively drier, less-vegetated habitats, according to a new study
> led by the University of Utah and published online in the_Proceedings
> of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS [2])_.
> 
> “Trying to explain why linguistic diversity is high in some places
> and low in others has been a big issue in anthropology,” says Brian
> Codding [3], an assistant professor of anthropology.
> 
> “For a number of years, people have shown a correlation between
> ecological diversity and linguistic diversity,” he adds. “What we did
> in this study that was different was to look at it over time – to
> actually see the process through which different populations came to
> live side-by-side as neighbors or replaced one population with
> another. We’re showing how the diversity actually developed over
> time.”
> 
>  Access full article below: 
> 
> http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112927109/native-american-migration-shape-ethnicity-language-082013/
> [4]
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.redorbit.com/topics/native-american/
> [2]
> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/13/1302008110.abstract?sid=ebe20e72-a555-402b-a4c6-7444c4e82b22
> [3] 
> https://faculty.utah.edu/u0850178-Brian_F_Codding/contact/index.hml
> [4]
> http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112927109/native-american-migration-shape-ethnicity-language-082013/