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

[Luke Kundl Pinette]

At a guess, it has to do with the fact that the Han Chinese were 
farmers, with a stable state society. Complex societies have many 
benefits compared with the hunter-gather lifestyle, but preservation of 
languages isn't one of them.

I can think of two books that deal with this issue: Nick Ostler's 
/Empires of Words/ talks about China in particular, and Jared Diamond's 
recent /The World Until Yesterday/ talks about the phenomenon in 
general.  I don't have those books on hand, but I imagine the citations 
(or "further reading" in Diamond's case) might have more on the topic.

The historical replacement of the Yue languages with the Han is fairly 
well-documented; and it seems to be widely accepted that the spread of 
Indo-European languages was linked to the spread of agriculture and/or 
domestic horses (I've never even seen an alternative theory).  It's not 
a stretch to suggest that the spread of agriculture is also responsible 
for the prehistoric dominance of Sinitic languages in the North China Plain.

As for the rule of ecology, it's been suggested many times that 
intensive cultivation initially developed in more marginal 
environments.  Later, the agriculturalists often have the numbers to 
take over the more productive environments for farming.  Though it's 
interesting that the article claimed the Central Valley is less 
productive than the coast.  Apart from Napa Valley, originally inhabited 
by the Wappo, none of the the first-settled areas are ones that I think 
of as major agricultural areas, though some of them are home to major 
fisheries.

Regards,
Luke

On 08/21/2013 10:01 PM, Zoe Tribur wrote:
> 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/ 
>>

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