Ebook: Language Dispersal Beyond Farming

Why do some languages wither and die, while others prosper and spread?
Around the turn of the millennium a number of archaeologists such as
Colin Renfrew and Peter Bellwood made the controversial claim that many
of the world’s major language families owe their dispersal to the adoption
of agriculture by their early speakers. In this volume, their proposal
is reassessed by linguists, investigating to what extent the economic
dependence on plant cultivation really impacted language spread in
various parts of the world. Special attention is paid to “tricky” language
families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Quechua, Aymara, Bantu, Indo-European,
Transeurasian, Turkic, Japano-Koreanic, Hmong-Mien and Trans-New
Guinea, that cannot unequivocally be regarded as instances of Farming/
Language Dispersal, even if subsistence played a role in their expansion