An introduction to the history of languages, from distant past to distant future, looking at how languages arise, change, and die, and showing how the histories of peoples and languages are closely connected. It mixes chapters on general processes with accounts of specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and English. 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, he 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 theyspeak. 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 andothers die, considers whether similar cyclical processes are found at different times and places, and examines the causes of internal 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. INDICE: List of Maps List of Figures List of Tables Preface Part I: Before History Unwritten Languages The Large Language Groups Part II: The Basis of History History and Writing Hieroglyphs and Egyptian Chinese - The Oldest Survivor Part III: Language Expansions Greek - Conquest and Culture Latin - Conquest and Order Arabic - Conquest and Religion Part IV: Languages and Nations Did Dante Write in Italian? From Germanic to Modern English The Era of National Languages Part V: Europe and the World Languages of Europe and of the World How Languages are Born - or Made How Languages Disappear Part VI: Recent Past, Present, Future The Heyday of English Chinese and English in China And Then? Chronology References Guidelines for Answers to Questions Index
- ISBN: 978-0-19-960428-9
- Editorial: Oxford University
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 304
- Fecha Publicación: 17/11/2011
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés