The history of languages : an introduction / Tore Janson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Janson, Tore, 1936-

Series:

Oxford textbooks in linguistics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Includes bibliographical references (p. 264-267).

Historical linguistics.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

xiii, 280 pages : maps ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

This is an introduction to the history of languages, from the distant past to a glimpse at what languages may be like in the distant future. It looks at how languages arise, change, and ultimately vanish, and what lies behind their different destinies. What happens to languages, the author argues, has to do with what happens to the people who use them, and what happens to people, individually and collectively, is affected by the languages they speak.

The book opens by examining what languages the hunter-gatherers might have spoken and the changes 'to language that took place when agriculture made settled communities possible. It then looks at the effects of the invention of writing, the formation of empires, the spread of religions, and the recent dominance of world powers, and shows how these relate to great changes in the use of languages. Tore Janson discusses the appearance of new languages, the reasons why some languages spread and others die, considers whether similar cyclical processes are found at different times and places, and examines the relations between changes in society and changes in languages and dialects.

The book ranges widely among the world's languages and mixes thematic chapters on general processes of change with accounts of specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and English. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Before history

1 Unwritten languages 3

1.1 When did languages come into being? 3

1.2 Forty thousand or two million years? 5

1.3 What was the reason? 6

1.4 Languages of gatherers and hunters 9

1.5 Were languages then just like languages now? 11

1.6 Vocabulary and society 13

1.7 How many Khoisan languages are there? 15

1.8 'What language do you speak?' 'Don't know.' 16

1.9 The many languages of Australia 18

1.10 What is a language? 19

1.11 How many languages existed twelve thousand years ago? 21

2 The large language groups 24

2.1 Societal and linguistic changes 24

2.2 Germanic, Slavic, Romance 25

2.3 Indo-European languages 28

2.4 Bantu languages 34

2.5 What is a Bantu language like? 36

2.6 Other language groups 38

2.7 How language groups were formed 40

Further reading, review questions, etc. 44

Part II The basis of history

3 History and writing 51

4 Hieroglyphs and Egyptian 53

4.1 River valleys and states 53

4.2 The state, the language, and the script 54

4.3 Hieroglyphs 56

5 Chinese-the oldest survivor 59

5.1 Writing in another way 60

5.2 Culture and states 63

5.3 The large state 65

5.4 Unity and splits 67

5.5 Devouring other languages 68

5.6 Neighbours 70

5.7 Writing and society 71

Further reading, review questions, etc. 73

Part III Language expansions

6 Greek-conquest and culture 77

6.1 Language and alphabet 77

6.2 Language as creation 80

6.3 Are languages equal? 81

6.4 Alphabet and dialect 83

6.5 From city states to empire 85

6.6 The New Greek 87

6.7 Learning from the Greeks 88

7 Latin-conquest and order 91

7.1 Empire and language 91

7.2 Language shift and language extinction 96

7.3 Latin as an international language 97

7.4 The influence of Latin 101

8 Arabic-conquest and religion 103

8.1 Invasion and languages 103

8.2 Arabic as a language of high culture 109

8.3 Decline, splits, and dialects 110

8.4 One language or many? 111

Further reading, review questions, etc. 117

Part IV Languages and nations

9 Did Dante write in Italian? 121

9.1 How languages become languages 121

9.2 Latin and French 123

9.3 Oc, oil, and si 127

9.4 Written language and language name 131

10 From Germanic to Modern English 133

10.1 How English came to Britain 133

10.2 Germani, Angles, Saxons 136

10.3 The language of the Angles and Saxons 137

10.4 Runes in Britain 138

10.5 The Roman script and English 140

10.6 The first centuries of English literature 142

10.7 Bede, Latin, and English 144

10.8 King Alfred and West Saxon 146

10.9 Normans and French 148

10.10 The transformation of English 149

10.11 The new standard 152

10.12 Nation state and national language 153

11 The era of national languages 156

11.1 State, school, and languages 158

11.2 National languages and national poets 161

11.3 Language and politics 163

11.4 The language competition 165

Further reading, review questions etc. 168

Part V Europe and the world

12 Languages of Europe and of the world 173

12.1 Portuguese in the West 173

12.2tSpaniards, Englishmen, and the others 176

12.3 America-a continent with three languages 179

12.4 Portugal and the rest of the world 181

12.5 English overseas 182

12.6 What happened? 183

13 How languages are born-or made 185

13.1 Slave trade, language mutilation, and language birth 185

13.2 Are Creoles languages? 189

13.3 The remarkable similarities 190

13.4 Creole languages and language change 192

13.5 Afrikaans-Germanic and African 193

13.6 Afrikaans-dialect or Creole language? 195

13.7 Norwegian-one language or two? 197

13.8 How spoken language becomes written language-or vice versa 199

13.9 How languages come into being 203

14 How languages disappear 204

14.1 Death of a language 204

14.2 The languages without a future 207

14.3 The realignment of dialects 208

14.4 What will be left? 208

14.5 How languages disappear 209

14.6 Shiyeyi and Thimbukushu 213

14.7 The disappearance of languages-good or bad? 215

Further reading, review questions, etc. 218

Part VI Recent past, present, future

15 The heyday of English 223

15.1 The new internationalism 223

15.2 French, German, Russian, English 225

15.3 The time of English 226

15.4 Images of English 229

16 Chinese and English in China 233

16.1 East and West 233

16.2 Baihua, Putonghua, and the simplified script 235

16.3 From antiquity to modern times in a hundred years 237

16.4 Language in school, language in life 238

16.5 English and China 240

16.6 Words, script, thought 242

16.7 The future 243

17 What next? 246

17.1 In two hundred years 247

17.2 In two thousand years 255

17.3 In two million years 258

Further reading, review questions, etc 259.

ISBN:

9780199604289

0199604282

9780199604296

0199604290

OCLC:

761366528