The Rise and Fall of Languages [Paperback]

R. M. W. Dixon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521626544 | ISBN-13: 978-0521626545

This book puts forward a new approach to language change, the punctuated equilibrium model. This is based on the premise that during most of the 100,000 or more years that humans have had language, states of equilibrum have existed during which linguistic features diffused across the languages in a given area so that they gradually converged on a common prototype. From time to time, the state of equilibrium would be punctuated, with the expansion and split of peoples and of languages. Most recently, as a result of European colonization and globalization of communication, many languages face imminent extinction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is required reading for anyone seriously interested in what we can honestly recover from the past history of languages." James A. Matisoff, University of California, Berkeley

"This book will be seminal in bringing about a paradigm shift in historical linguistics." Randy J. LaPolla, Academia Sinica Taiwan and City University of Hong Kong

Book Description

This book puts forward a new way of looking at the emergence and development of human language since its beginnings over 100,000 years ago in terms of a state of equilibrium which was periodically 'punctuated'. Punctuations saw the expansion or split of peoples and of languages, most recently as a result of European colonisation and the globalisation of communication. Professor Dixon challenges many of the views currently held by linguists, archaeologists and geneticists, notably those concerning the usefulness of the 'family tree' model of language relationships and the recent speculation concerning the reconstruction of a 'proto-language'.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521626544
• ISBN-13: 978-0521626545
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good review of language history and origin, January 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of Languages (Paperback)

R M Dixon is a well known linguist who specializes in the aboriginal languages of Australia. In this captivating book, Dixon presents his theory of punctuated equilibrium (adopted from the idea of the same name by evolutionary theorists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge) to describe how languages change. Dixon challenges linguists to dedicate more time to the study and description of the thousands of languages on the verge of extinction, rather than devote their energies to arcane formalisms. The author is also highly critical of those historical linguists who claim to have found evidence for the "mother of all languages", accusing them of poor methodology. Historical linguistics involves slow and painstaking analysis of language forms, and Dixon is not the first to chastise newcomers for shoddy work. Dixon's book is not overly technical, and is thus suited for both a professional and a lay audience. Anyone interested in learning more about the evolution of language should read Dixon's latest work.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointment, August 7, 2006

By 

Whimemsz - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of Languages (Paperback)

The book is a somewhat short essay by Dixon arguing that a theory of "Punctuated Equilibrium" best explains linguistic relationships. That is, he believes that for most of the time language has existed, languages have been in states of equilibrium with their neighbors, during which time they would gradually converge on an areal prototype (through exchange of lexical items, grammatical concepts and categories--though not many actual grammatical forms--and features of pronunciation). These states of equilibrium would be occasionally punctuated by some "catastrophic" event (e.g., a volcanic eruption, an invasion by some other group into the area, the invention of some new technology, or the development of agriculture). During these short periods of punctuation, languages would rapidly change and split into daughters.

According to Dixon, it is these situations which would create the type of "family tree" relationship among languages which the Comparative Method is designed to reconstruct, and which so beautifully fits with the IE family. However, this was not the normal situation, and after a few millennia, these daughter languages would gradually start to enter into states of equilibrium with their new neighbors, gradually becoming more like the areal prototype of their new location, and eventually obscuring their genetic relationships.

Dixon's decades of experience with Australian languages clearly influenced this idea greatly, and it certainly seems like it could apply well to the situation there. Intuitively, furthermore, the idea seems to me like a plausible one, and I had already assumed something vaguely similar to it before I read the book. However, the book turned out to be quite dissapointing. I felt like Dixon did a poor job of backing up his hypothesis. The book is only abour 150 pages, but even at that length it quickly began to feel very repetitive, with Dixon mostly repeating the theory over and over with new wording. Hardly any examples from actual languages appear, and when they do, it's usually just in the form of a statement by Dixon with no actual forms from the language itself provided. I doubt there are more than four or five occurences of actual native language forms in the entire work. It is a true shame that an idea that seems to me so promising was justified so weakly (and particularly since the author was a man of such intellect and eminence as Bob Dixon).

Not that PE does not have merits. It has been clear for a long time that the Family Tree model of linguistic relationships is weak in several areas. The PE hypothesis could provide for a fuller picture of proto-languages, language splits, and linguistic relationships.

And when Dixon is not arguing for his PE hypothesis, he is at his best. His refutations of the Nostraticists and Proto-Worlders are succinct and direct (I just wish he would back them up with concrete evidence, rather than vague statements along the lines of "they allow a great deal of phonetic leeway in comparisons." Show me proof that they do this! Don't just say it!).

His final chapter (ch. 9), basically a discussion of how the discipline of linguistics has lost its way and become lost from its original purpose (i.e., describing languages) and why field documentation of dying languages is so important, is by far the most persuasive and elegant of the work. I agree with all of the points Dixon makes here (the ridiculousness of the dozens of new fad theories appearing for a few years and then silently fading away, the huge importance of documenting dying and endangered languages before we lose them forever, the obligation of all linguists to undertake this task, etc.), and I find many of his statements (such as "If this work [documenting undocumented languages] is not done soon, it can never be done. Future generations will then look back at the people who call themselves 'linguists' at the close of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, with bewilderment and disdain", p. 138) to be extremely moving and haunting. How I wish the rest of the book had been written with the same passion and persuasiveness of the final chapter!

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for those with a bit of background, February 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of Languages (Paperback)

This is not the best first book to read in linguistics, but if you already know some general linguistics and historical linguistics, it's good. What it significantly does is offer a critique of the Nostratic School of linguistics (which has been done elsewhere, most notably on a PBS "Nova" show) and offer a new critique, a punctuated equilibrium theory borrowed from the natural sciences. The p-e theory is quite cogent, but Dixon doesn't develop it in too much detail (which is actually his point, that most of the history of human language is irrecoverable). What Dixon does do is offer a research program for practicing linguistics as well as a huge putdown of the theoretical obsessions of most linguists practicing today. This part of the book is actually the most entertaining and courageous; I agree with the author in thinking that too much work is being devoted to Chomskyan (and other purely theoretical) linguistics and not enough to descriptive studies. Whether the money is actually available to record the 1500 or so as-yet unrecorded languages is highly debatable. Dixon himself puts forward a figure of about $300,000 per language. I have a feeling that if any government agency decides to follow through with Dixon's proposals, they'll have to pick and choose which languages to save. Although Dixon puts himself forward as a tough-minded reactionary railing against the vaporisms in contemporary linguistics, he winds up being in the same boat as impractical environementalists to whom any suggestion of, say, which chunk of rainforest to save is complete sacrilege.