Customer Reviews

Language in the Americas

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This book poses a mighty challenge to the orthodox view that there are up to 200 or at least several dozen independent families of indigenous languages in the Americas, by asserting that there are no more than three: Eskimo-Aleut which is related to the Eurasian macrofamily extending across Europe and Northern Asia; Na-Dene which is concentrated in the south- and northwest of North America, and Amerind, comprising about 90% of American languages.

In seeking to reconstruct the evolution of language groups and the relationships among their component languages, linguists have become accustomed to comparing a few languages across many words, but Professor Greenberg's approach is the opposite - he looks at a large number of languages across a smaller number of words. The nature of the words is the important factor: the core lexicon which in the main consists of personal pronouns, numerals, body parts and terms for water, blood, moon, sun, night, day and the humble louse.

Chapter One deals with the principles of genetic linguistic classification including Greenberg's methodology used for his now universally accepted African classification, synchronic & diachronic resemblance, sound correspondences & sound changes, multilateral comparison, recoverable vocabulary and petrified grammatical markers. The following chapter examines the unity and bounds of Amerind by providing some of the most striking pieces of evidence like pronominal prefixes indicating the possessor of a noun, ergative markers and first person plural inclusive versus exclusive.

Greenberg examines a vast amount of lexical material, mostly Amerind. Chapter Three treats each of the 11 proposed subgroups of Amerind in a separate section with an enumeration of its languages and their classification, plus a brief history of previous taxonomic hypotheses and a set of characteristic etymologies. The following two chapters present the evidence for Amerind as a single macrofamily, with Chapter 4 providing about 1900 lexical etymologies common to two or more subgroups and Chapter 5 pointing out more than 100 grammatical features found across the subgroups.

The penultimate chapter discusses the problem of Na-Dene whilst the final one deals with Eurasiatic, Na-Dene's connection to Dene-Sino-Caucasian and the historical implications for the settling of the Americas by three waves of peoples. This theory receives support from serological and dental evidence. Finally, Table 11 provides a hypothetical list of 14 global language families. Should Niger-Kordofanian & Nilo-Saharan of Africa, Indo-Pacific & Australian of Australasia and the three families North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan & Na-Dene respectively have a deeper single origin, the number may be reduced to ten.

The book contains 4 appendices (on glottochronolgy, mathematical bases of subgrouping, distribution of Amerind etymologies & summary of the classification), 3 maps, a bibliography and 3 indices: Amerind Etymologies, Language Names and General. Further interesting studies on historical linguistics and long-range comparison include Merritt Ruhlen's On the Origin of Language, Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages edited by Vitaly Shevoroshkin, The Nostratic Macrofamily: Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship by Allan R Bomhard and Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages edited by Sydney M Lamb.

The classification of African languages into 4 major families (Khoisan, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian and Afro-Asiatic) was the work of Greenberg who published this research in the early 60s. Of course it was initially treated with scepticism by the "splitter" linguists, Greenberg's classification is now universally accepted. There are some very sound arguments in favour of his hypothesis of 3 macro-families in the Americas (Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene & Amerind). Christy Turner's dental studies demonstrate only 3 distinct shapes of teeth in the native people of the Americas, corresponding with Greenberg's classificaton. Genetic studies of native Americans also indicate the same three groups (see the work of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza). Most archaeologists believe that modern humans first entered the Americas only about 12 000 years ago. If this is so, then the "splitter" linguists have to explain how so many (up to 200) language families arose in such a short time.

Language In The Americas is a very valuable book and I have no doubt that Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis will gain the widespread acceptance now enjoyed by his work on the language families of Africa.

The approximately 1,000 native languages of the Americas are classified into approximately 200 different language families by mainstream scholars, a very high level of diversity in comparison with, e.g., Europe, which contains only three language families (Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, and Basque). In this book, Greenberg claims to demonstrate that there are only three language families in the Americas: Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. Eskimo-Aleut is uncontroversial, as is Na-Dene but for Greenberg's inclusion of Haida, for which the evidence is generally considered unconvincing. The argument that most of the languages fall into an "Amerind" family is the main point of the book.

Greenberg's claim has been rejected by the great majority of specialists for two reasons. First, the method used, superficial lexical comparison, is known to be unreliable. The similarities presented may well be due to chance; even if they are not, the method cannot exclude borrowing as the source of similarties. Second, Greenberg's data have been shown, in a number of published studies (including one by this reviewer), to be riddled with errors. An additional problem is that, although Greenberg offers a subclassification of Amerind, he presents no evidence whatever in support of it.

In sum, this book does not provide either reliable information on the classification of the languages of the Americas or an example of valid historical linguistic methodology.

Don't buy this book for language classification. The proposal contained therein is undemonstrated and controversial. This is the near unanimous consensus of all Americanist specialists. See Bill Poser's review below and Lyle Campbell's (1997) extensive chapter on unreliable methodologies (such as the one used by Greenberg). The positive reviews below are by readers who probably not familiar with American linguistics. In order to get a better picture of the languages on these continents, readers will need to consult more than Greenberg.

Look instead at:

(1) the language volume (1996) of the "Handbook of North American Indians" published by the Smithsonian Institution

(2) Mithun (1999) "The languages of native North America"

(3) Campbell (1997) "American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America"

(4) Campbell & Mithun (1979) "Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment"

(5) Terrence Kaufman's (1994) chapter "The native languages of South America" in "Atlas of the world's languages" (editors: C. Mosley & R. E. Asher)

(6) Adelaar & Muysken (2004) "The Languages of the Andes"

(7) Dixon & Aikhenvald (1999) "The Amazonian Languages"

However, this book is good for thinking about new proposals. Many are worth being tested, particularly in South America. But, keep in mind there are several other proposals by others (including linguists before Greenberg, like Morris Swadesh and Jorge Suarez) that are worth considering.

So, in short, take a look if you are curious about this book's reputation, but keep in mind that it is unsupported by the linguistics community as a whole. However, in spite of the failure of this book's contribution to historical linguistics, Greenberg is an excellent typologist who is widely respected for his contributions in this area of linguistics.