16.2089, Sum: Language extinction, Neolithic Revolution

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2089. Wed Jul 06 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2089, Sum: Language extinction, Neolithic Revolution

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1)
Date: 04-Jul-2005
From: John Kingston < jkingston at linguist.umass.edu >
Subject: Language extinction, Neolithic Revolution 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 13:19:27
From: John Kingston < jkingston at linguist.umass.edu >
Subject: Language extinction, Neolithic Revolution 
 

Regarding query: http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1851.html#1

Colleagues,

A few weeks ago, I posted to the list asking whether anyone knew the 
grounds on which Elizabeth Kolbert claimed in her recent piece in the 
New Yorker (6 June 2005, 'Last Words: A Language Dies,') that a 
large number of languages had gone extinct when the Neolithic 
revolution occurred.  This was the first time I heard such an assertion, 
and I was surprised at it.  I received very informative and somewhat 
varied replies from:

Mikael Parkvall
David  Drewelow
Joseph F. Foster
Martin Paviour-Smith
Claire Bowern
Harald Hammarström
Scott DeLancey
Robert Orr

for which I am very grateful.  I've summarized those replies here.  

A number of people pointed me to a recent book by Daniel Nettle and 
Suzanne Romaine 'Vanishing Voices,' published by Oxford University 
Press in 2000.  (Nettle has another, only slightly less recent 
book 'Linguistic Diversity,' 1999, Oxford University Press that 
apparently makes the same point.)  David Crystal's recent 
book 'Language Death' (2000, Cambridge University Press) was also 
mentioned, as well as  John McWhorter's 'The Power of Babel,' (2002, 
W.H. Freeman, pp 258ff).  

A number of people also referred to Renfrew's proposal that the 
spread of Indo-European languages by the Neolithic Revolution 
caused the nearly complete extinction of languages spoken previously 
in Europe - Basque being the sole survivor.  Peter Bellwood's work 
was also cited as arguing that language families have expanded with 
the development of agriculture and animal husbandry by their 
speakers.  

One respondent disputed the claim that it is the spread of 
horticulturists and pastoralists that causes languages to go extinct 
and  attributed language extinction instead to the expansion of 
theocratic and/or military chiefdoms, citing the case of the Zulu in 
South Africa.

Thank you very much again to all the respondents.
John Kingston 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics





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