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Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time
In this ground-breaking book, Johanna Nichols proposes means of describing, comparing, and interpreting linguistic diversity, both genetic and structural, providing the foundations for a theory of diversity based upon population science. This book will interest linguists, archaeologists, and population specialists.
"An awe-inspiring book, unequalled in scope, originality, and the range of language data considered."—Anna Siewierska, Linguistics
"Fascinating. . . . A brilliant pioneering study."— Journal of Indo-European Studies
"A superbly reasoned book."—John A. C. Greppin, Times Literary Supplement
"An awe-inspiring book, unequalled in scope, originality, and the range of language data considered."—Anna Siewierska, Linguistics
"Fascinating. . . . A brilliant pioneering study."— Journal of Indo-European Studies
"A superbly reasoned book."—John A. C. Greppin, Times Literary Supplement
- GenresLinguisticsLanguage
374 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 27, 2018
Astonishingly brilliant work of linguistics, by now rightly become a classic. Laid the foundations of comparative typology, its use for meaningful categorization and for supplementing the traditional comparative method.
Although it is by no means an easy read and quite technical in its style and orientation, this book should really be added to the 'canon' of works that are must-reads for more advanced conlanging. I mean this in the sense that it is extremely useful for conlangers even if not written for that purpose (just like the textbooks of Thomas Payne etc.). In particular, this book provides some very useful information to avoid the 'buffet' approach to conlang features, where the conlanger just grabs for each feature whatever strategy they like willy-nilly; by giving systematic analysis of the correlation between syntactic (and morphological) features, one gets a better sense of what 'choices' realistically belong together.
Although it is by no means an easy read and quite technical in its style and orientation, this book should really be added to the 'canon' of works that are must-reads for more advanced conlanging. I mean this in the sense that it is extremely useful for conlangers even if not written for that purpose (just like the textbooks of Thomas Payne etc.). In particular, this book provides some very useful information to avoid the 'buffet' approach to conlang features, where the conlanger just grabs for each feature whatever strategy they like willy-nilly; by giving systematic analysis of the correlation between syntactic (and morphological) features, one gets a better sense of what 'choices' realistically belong together.
November 19, 2014
Professor Nichols has done a remarkable piece of research that forms the basis of this monograph. The idea is to try to establish a methodology for characterizing the state of languages at great time depth - in this case, more than 10,000 years before present. She chose a large (150+) sample of the world's languages, attempting as much as possible to sample all of the major language stocks and families while generally avoiding the "huge" ones (the largest language in terms of speakers was Russian, and most of the languages had several orders of magnitude fewer speakers - indeed, a few are extinct). They cover all of the major geographic regions of the world.
It would be impossible to even summarize what Prof. Nichols did to establish this methodology, and reach the conclusions that she did. For that, you'll need to read the book. Skimming the table of contents might give you some clues. But to really understand what she undertook, one must read the book in its entirety.
But a brief note of caution: What Prof. Nichols has done is not re-construct some nebulous proto-language or languages; that is to say, her conclusions do not have much to do with the vocabulary of any reconstructed language. Rather, what she has done is to characterize prot-languages structurally, morpho-syntactically, and semantically. For example, she concludes which sorts of features are relatively stable over the course of thousands of years, e.g., accusative vs. ergative vs. active/stative case systems, or the advent and use of adpositional elements. She also comments extensively on the trajectories of language evolution, geographically and in terms of degree of contact with and/or submersion beneath other languages synchronic to the ones under study.
This monograph won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistics Society of America, which is the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for linguistics exposition. Clearly the breadth and level of scholarship, coupled with Prof. Nichols' talent for writing, warrant this award.
I found that I had only one minor disagreement with Prof. Nichols' conclusions, and as she is the expert and I the layperson, I'm more than willing to concede the argument to her. But here it is, for you the reader to judge for yourself: In several places in the final two chapters of the book, Prof. Nichols repeatedly asserts that there is essentially no 'Darwinian' style of 'natural selection' in languages. In other words, she doesn't see evidence for natural selection guiding the evolution of languages over long time periods. My own very limited experience suggests that this is not the case. In my case, I had the privilege of living in Polynesia for a time when I was a boy. The language spoken around me was Samoan, one of the languages of the Pacific Ocean. Samoan is unquestionably derived from the original Maori spoken in New Zealand, and represents a mid-point both geographically and linguistically between Maori (the "mother tongue") and Hawaiian, which is again the most geographically and linguistically distant from Maori. It is very easy to see a handful of language features being clearly preferred as a result of environment, at least in my view. For instance, the phonemic inventory of Maori and its offspring dwindled rather directly as the language moved west-to-east. A simple example is "Hello": In Samoan, this is "Talofa", whereas in Hawaiian it is "Aloha". Neither the "T" nor the "F" sound remain in Hawaiian; they have been dropped for some reason, possibly as a result of sea travel where these sounds (at least the "F" sound) are harder to transmit orally across an expanse of water. Similarly, "house" in Samoan is "fale", whereas in Hawaiian it is "hale". Again, the missing "F" sound has been replaced by "H", just as in "Talofa" -> "Aloha".
Numerous other examples occur to me in this regard. It strikes me that language functions on two levels: On one hand, it is certainly a remarkable tool for expressing and communicating ideas, but on the other hand, it is also a transport vector for culture and history. These two functions are fairly inseparable - language is necessarily in service to both utility (a synchronic use) and cultural preservation (a diachronic use). To assert that no selection-style evolution takes place in the service of either of these two imperatives seems very unlikely to me. But again --- I'm not the expert! I leave this as an open question.
It would be impossible to even summarize what Prof. Nichols did to establish this methodology, and reach the conclusions that she did. For that, you'll need to read the book. Skimming the table of contents might give you some clues. But to really understand what she undertook, one must read the book in its entirety.
But a brief note of caution: What Prof. Nichols has done is not re-construct some nebulous proto-language or languages; that is to say, her conclusions do not have much to do with the vocabulary of any reconstructed language. Rather, what she has done is to characterize prot-languages structurally, morpho-syntactically, and semantically. For example, she concludes which sorts of features are relatively stable over the course of thousands of years, e.g., accusative vs. ergative vs. active/stative case systems, or the advent and use of adpositional elements. She also comments extensively on the trajectories of language evolution, geographically and in terms of degree of contact with and/or submersion beneath other languages synchronic to the ones under study.
This monograph won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistics Society of America, which is the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for linguistics exposition. Clearly the breadth and level of scholarship, coupled with Prof. Nichols' talent for writing, warrant this award.
I found that I had only one minor disagreement with Prof. Nichols' conclusions, and as she is the expert and I the layperson, I'm more than willing to concede the argument to her. But here it is, for you the reader to judge for yourself: In several places in the final two chapters of the book, Prof. Nichols repeatedly asserts that there is essentially no 'Darwinian' style of 'natural selection' in languages. In other words, she doesn't see evidence for natural selection guiding the evolution of languages over long time periods. My own very limited experience suggests that this is not the case. In my case, I had the privilege of living in Polynesia for a time when I was a boy. The language spoken around me was Samoan, one of the languages of the Pacific Ocean. Samoan is unquestionably derived from the original Maori spoken in New Zealand, and represents a mid-point both geographically and linguistically between Maori (the "mother tongue") and Hawaiian, which is again the most geographically and linguistically distant from Maori. It is very easy to see a handful of language features being clearly preferred as a result of environment, at least in my view. For instance, the phonemic inventory of Maori and its offspring dwindled rather directly as the language moved west-to-east. A simple example is "Hello": In Samoan, this is "Talofa", whereas in Hawaiian it is "Aloha". Neither the "T" nor the "F" sound remain in Hawaiian; they have been dropped for some reason, possibly as a result of sea travel where these sounds (at least the "F" sound) are harder to transmit orally across an expanse of water. Similarly, "house" in Samoan is "fale", whereas in Hawaiian it is "hale". Again, the missing "F" sound has been replaced by "H", just as in "Talofa" -> "Aloha".
Numerous other examples occur to me in this regard. It strikes me that language functions on two levels: On one hand, it is certainly a remarkable tool for expressing and communicating ideas, but on the other hand, it is also a transport vector for culture and history. These two functions are fairly inseparable - language is necessarily in service to both utility (a synchronic use) and cultural preservation (a diachronic use). To assert that no selection-style evolution takes place in the service of either of these two imperatives seems very unlikely to me. But again --- I'm not the expert! I leave this as an open question.
June 2, 2025
The thesis of this book is pretty common sense: geography (meaning languages spoken close in geographical terms) influence each other too. I have a big problem with the methodology of this book: out of the thousands of Earth's languages the author chooses a sample of less than 200 and, using simple statistics, draws her conclusions. I am sure that, choosing English instead of French or Portuguese instead of Russian, the results of the calculations would have been different. To understand, she draws conclusions from 4% differences in, again, about 170 languages.
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