Ebook: Languages: A Very Short Introduction

Introduction: Dimensions of linguistic diversity -- How many languages are there in the world? -- Phylogenetic linguistics : establishing linguistic relationships -- The future of languages -- Some problems in the counting of languages -- The genotypes of languages -- The diversity of signed languages -- Conclusion: The unity of human language.;How many languages are there? What differentiates one language from another? Are new languages still being discovered? Why are so many languages disappearing? These are some of the questions considered in this introduction. By examining the science of languages, we find that the answers are not as simple as we might expect.