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This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe. International experts in the field explore this issue using new analytical research techniques and drawing on large databases, with a focus on the language and population histories of Island Southeast Asia/Oceania, Africa, and South America.
List of contents
- 1: Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken: Patterns of diversification and contact: Re-examining dispersal hypotheses
- Part I: General approaches
- 2: Johanna Nichols: Dispersal patterns shape areal typology
- 3: Peter Trudgill: Sociolinguistic typology and the uniformitarian hypothesis
- 4: Tom Güldemann and Harald Hammarström: Geographical axis effects in large-scale linguistic distributions
- 5: Balthasar Bickel: Large and ancient linguistic areas
- Part II: Southeast Asia and Oceania
- 6: Marian Klamer, Mily Crevels, and Pieter Muysken: Patterns of dispersal and diversification in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania
- 7: Nicholas Evans: Time, diversification, and dispersal on the Australian continent: Three enigmas of linguistic prehistory
- 8: William A. Foley: Language diversity, geomorphological change, and population movements in the Sepik-Ramu basin of Papua New Guinea
- 9: Jean-Christophe Galipaud: The dynamics of human expansion and cultural diversification in Southeast Asia and Oceania during the Neolithic: An archaeological perspective
- 10: Mark Donohue and Tim Denham: The role of contact and language shift in the spread of Austronesian languages across Island Southeast Asia
- Part III: Africa
- 11: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Mily Crevels, and Pieter Muysken: Patterns of dispersal and diversification in Africa
- 12: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal: Language diversification and contact in Africa
- 13: Koen Bostoen: The Bantu expansion: Some facts and fiction
- 14: Maarten Mous: Language isolates and the spread of pastoralism in East Africa
- Part IV: South America
- 15: Pieter Muysken and Mily Crevels: Patterns of dispersal and diversification in South America
- 16: Patience Epps: Amazonian linguistic diversity and its sociocultural correlates
- 17: Robert S. Walker: Cultural phylogenetics in lowland South America
About the author
Mily Crevels is Senior University Lecturer in Linguistics at Leiden University. Her main research interests are the indigenous languages of South America, especially in the Guaporé-Mamoré and Gran Chaco regions, language documentation, and linguistic typology. She is the co-founder and editor of the series 'Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas' (Brill) and has edited multiple books on the native languages of South America
Pieter Muysken is Professor of Linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen. His main research interests are Andean languages, Creole languages, and language contact, and his current work focuses on language contact and language history in South America. His books include Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing (CUP, 2000), The Languages of the Andes (with Willem Adelaar; CUP, 2004) and Functional Categories (CUP, 2008).
Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken are the editors of the four-volume work Lenguas de Bolivia (Plural, 2009-2015) and of South American Indigenous Languages: Four Descriptive Studies (Brill, forthcoming).
Summary
This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe. International experts in the field explore this issue using new analytical research techniques and drawing on large databases, with a focus on the language and population histories of Island Southeast Asia/Oceania, Africa, and South America.
