Languages In The World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language

Including detailed linguistic analysis of an array of languages,coupled with sociological, historical, and biologicalinsight, Languages in the World provides auniquely interdisciplinary account of the evolution of languageover the past 200,000 years. Tetel Andresen and Carter expertlyillustrate the reciprocal nature of the relationship betweenlanguage and society by balancing detailed discussion of thestructure and distribution of specific languages with engagingpersonal and political narratives. Exercises and questions forfurther discussion are included at the end of each chapter and acompanion website features sound files and a host of additionalsupplementary material.

From the role of Sanskrit in philology to a detailed analysis ofthe effects of globalization on world language, this innovative newbookwill be an essential tool for anyone interested in betterunderstanding how language has evolved and where it is going.

Map of the Languages of the World i

IPA Consonant and Vowel Charts ii

List of Images iii

List of Maps iv

Preface: To Our Readers iv

PART I. LINGUISTIC PRELIMINARIES: APPROACH AND THEORY

Introductory Note: On Language

Chapter One All Languages Were Once Spanglish

The Mexican State of Coahuila y Tejas

1. What is Language?

2. How Many Languages are There?

3. How and When did Language Get Started?

4. The Structure of Spanglish

Final Note: The Encounter of Spanish and English on AmericanTelevision

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Two The Language Loop

The Australian Walkabout

1. Introducing the Language Loop

2. Language and Cognition

3. Language, the World, and Culture

4. Language and Linguistic Structure

5. Language, Discourse, and Ideology

6. On Major and Minor Languages

Final Note: The Contingencies of Time, Place, and Biology

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Three Linguistics and Classification

The Role of Sanskrit in Philology

1. On Linguistics, Philology, Linguists, and Grammarians

2. Genetic Classification

3. Areal Classification

4. Typological Classification

5. Functional Classification

Final Note: The Role of Sanskrit in India Today

Exercises

Discussion Questions

PART II. EFFECTS OF POWER

Introductory Note: On Power

Chapter Four Effects of the Nation–State and the Possibilityof Kurdistan

Lines Are Drawn in the Sand

1. The Status of Language on the Eve of the Nation–State

2. The Epistemology of the Nation–State

3. The French Revolution, German Romanticism, and PrintCapitalism

4. Standardization and the Instilling of Vergonha

5. Language and Individual Identity

6. What s Race Got to do With It?

7. The Problematic Race–Nation–Language Triad: Three CaseStudies

Final Note: The Kurds Today Different Places, DifferentOutcomes

Language Profile: Kurdish

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Five The Development of Writing in the Litmus ofReligion and Politics

The Story of the Qur ân

1. The Magico–Religious Interpretations of the Origins ofWriting

2. Steps Toward the Representation of Speech

3. Types of Writing Systems

4. Religion and the Spread of Writing

5. The Always Already Intervention of Politics

6. Orality and Literacy

Final Note: Azerbaijan Achieves Alphabetic Autonomy

Language Profile: Arabic

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Six Language Planning and Language Law: Shaping theRight to Speak

Melting Snow and Protests at the Top of the World

1. Language Academies: The First Enforcers

2. Another Look at Prescriptivism

3. Making Language Official: A Tale of Three Patterns

4. Language Policy and Education: A Similar Tale of ThreePatterns

5. Language Planners and Language Police

Final Note: Choosing Death or Life

Language Profile: Tibetan

Exercises

Discussion Questions

PART III: EFFECTS OF MOVEMENT

Introductory Note: On Movement

Chapter Seven A Mobile History: Mapping Language Stocks andFamilies

Austronesian Origin Stories

1. Population Genetics and Links to Language

2. A Possible Polynesian Reconstruction

3. Linguistic Reconstructions Revisited

4. Proto–Indo–European and its Homeland

5. Other Language Stocks and Their Homelands

6. Models of Language Spread

7. Lost Tracks

Final Note: On Density and Diversity

Language Profile: Hawaiian

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Eight Colonial Consequences: Language Stocks andFamilies Remapped

Eiffel Towers in Vietnam

1. Time–Depths and Terminology

2. The Middle Kingdom: Government Encouraged Migrations

3. Linguistic Geography: Residual Zones and Spread Zones

4. Eurasian Empires: Persians, Mongols, Slavs, and Romans

5. Religions as Proto–Nations and Missionaries as Colonizers

6. English as an Emergent Language Family

Final Note: Creoles and the Case of Kreyòl Ayisyen

Language Profile: Vietnamese

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Nine Postcolonial Complications: ViolentOutcomes

Tamil Tigers Create New Terrorist Techniques

1. What s in a Name? Burma/Myanmar

2. Modern Sudan: The Clash of Two Colonialisms

3. The Caucasian Quasi–States: Two Types of Conflict

4. Poland s Shifting Borders

5. Basque and the Terrorist ETA

6. The Zapatista Uprising and Indigenous Languages inChiapas

Final Note: The Parsley Massacre

Language Profile: Tamil

Exercises

Discussion Questions

PART IV: EFFECTS OF TIME

Introductory Note: On Time

Chapter Ten The Remote Past: Language BecomesEmbodied

Look there!

1. Seeking Linguistic Bedrock

2.The Primate Body and Human Adaptations to Language

3. Evolution in Four Dimensions

4. The Genetic Story

5. Grammatical Categories and Deep–Time Linguistics

6. Complexity and the Arrow of Time

Final Note: The Last Stone Age Man in North America

Language Profile: !Xóõ

Exercises

Discussions Questions

Chapter Eleven The Recorded Past: Catching up toConditions Made Visible

Mongolian Horses

1. Chapter Three. The Invariable Word in English

2. Chapter Four. The Shift to Head–Marking in French

3. Chapter Five. Writing and e–Arabic

4. Chapter Six. Mongolian Cases

5. Chapter Seven. Reformulating Hawaiian Identity

6. Chapter Eight. Varieties of Chinese: Yesterday and Today

7. Chapter Nine. Juba Arabic Pidgin, Nubi, and Other AfricanCreoles

Final Note: Language Change in Progress

Language Profile: Mongolian

Exercises

Discussion Questions

Chapter Twelve The Imagined Future: Globalization and TheFate of Endangered Languages

Gold in the Mayan Highlands

1. Beyond the Nation–State: The Globalized New Economy

2. Money Talks: What Language Does it Speak?

3. When the Language Loop Unravels

4. Language Hotspots

5. Rethinking Endangerment

6. Technology to the Rescue

7. Anishinaabemowin Revitalization in Wisconsin

8. What Is Choice?

Final Note: Our Advocacies

Language Profile: Quiché

Discussion Questions

References

Subject Index

Language Index

Julie Tetel Andresen is Professor of English and formerChair of Linguistic at Duke University. A linguistichistoriographer focusing on French, German, British, and Americantheories of language from the eighteenth to the twenty–firstcenturies, she is the author of  Linguistics and Evolution:A Developmental Approach (2013) and  Linguistics inAmerica 1769 1924: A Critical History (1996).

Phillip M. Carter is Assistant Professor of English andLinguistics at Florida International University. Specializing inimmigrant and ethnolinguistic minority communities in the UnitesStates, his work on the language varieties and cultural practicesof U.S. Latinos has been published in leading journals,including  Language in Society,  EnglishWorldwide,  Journal ofSociolinguistics,  American Speech,and  Language in Linguistics Compass.