$35.52

FREE International Returns

$9.34 Shipping & Import Charges to Canada Details

Delivery Wednesday, June 5

Or fastest delivery Friday, May 31

Deliver to Canada

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$35.52 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Positive Tutors

Sold by

Positive Tutors

Returns

30-day refund/replacement

Returns

30-day refund/replacement

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$6.47

Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less See less

$8.39 delivery June 14 - July 10. Details

Deliver to Canada

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$35.52 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from and sold by ThriftBooks-Phoenix.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (13) from $9.95

Follow the author

Merritt Ruhlen

+ Follow

More books from this author

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue

by Merritt Ruhlen (Author)

4.3 58 ratings

See all formats and editions

Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. Try again.

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$35.52","priceAmount":35.52,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"35","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"52","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"%2BYJuwoq0ZwcM%2B90BagWM48tuKhmyM9z80Z%2F7mw2Z70%2BVuwAJcw%2FrCV65k4VD0KZbYBLMSCoxSTlOH95FpRpNzGMYijthzIhaQxXoUL0f3aLURmfWvIhvgcn69vYH5ubgke8KdHo6JweCzVfOxX8zJkS9lYR6c1X796RqvjdspfybxfzO0kdvVFQaWyiv%2F0l1","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.47","priceAmount":6.47,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"47","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"%2BYJuwoq0ZwcM%2B90BagWM48tuKhmyM9z8OQcszj9wBkPQGVnFKtkzoZ9QPBqhyiVLJt6qF2S%2B8poUv0DXvNfKF7SOY96GpRt1uU1VD2qVumssecM1WBC7SXrSHkfZbztjhYYSwZ6JbeX4OIvomPxPanLl6ded1gC2RC1nZuCiPmBvRG6BNJ1lf6SYb3GSsaGs","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The Origin of Language

A critically acclaimed journey back through time in search of the Mother Tongue and the roots of the human family

"Invites the reader to learn and apply the common process used by linguists." —Science News

"This book represents exactly the kind of thinking that is needed to pull historical linguistics out of its twentieth-century doldrums. . . . [W]ithout a doubt, a very readable book, well adapted to its popularizing aim." —LOS Forum

"Believing that doing is learning, Ruhlen encourages his readers to try their hand (and eye) at classifying languages. This exercise helps us appreciate the challenges inherent in this fascinating and controversial science of comparative linguistics." —Booklist

"Ruhlen is a leader in the new attempt to write the unified theory of language development and diffusion." —Library Journal

"A powerful statement [and] also a wonderfully clear exposition of linguistic thinking about prehistory. . . . [Q]uite solid and very well presented." —Anthropological Science

Frequently bought together

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue

$35.52

Get it as soon as Wednesday, Jun 5

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by Positive Tutors and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

+

The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language

$16.86

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

$11.99

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

John McWhorter
541
Paperback
$16.86
$7.48 shipping
Guy Deutscher
844
Paperback
$11.99
$7.46 shipping
John Ayto
801
Paperback
$10.32
$7.56 shipping
Nicholas Ostler
625
Paperback
$12.69
$7.46 shipping
Eric Gans
20
Paperback
$15.70
$7.53 shipping
Merritt Ruhlen
9
Hardcover
$149.43
$7.66 shipping
Usually ships within 2 to 3 days

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a sophomore in college, I desperately wanted to major in theoretical linguistics, but I knew only three languages, and I was advised that this was insufficient for the major. Things might have been different if this book were available then: unlike most books about language evolution, Ruhlen's Origin of Language actually gets you involved in applying standard linguistic techniques to carefully chosen examples--by the end of the book, you will have constructed a family tree of the world's languages. And you needn't know any other than your mother tongue when you start, but you'll probably want to go out and learn several more languages by time you are done. Recommended.

From the Back Cover

The Origin of Language

A critically acclaimed journey back through time in search of the Mother Tongue and the roots of the human family

"Invites the reader to learn and apply the common process used by linguists." --Science News

"This book represents exactly the kind of thinking that is needed to pull historical linguistics out of its twentieth-century doldrums. . . . [W]ithout a doubt, a very readable book, well adapted to its popularizing aim." --LOS Forum

"Believing that doing is learning, Ruhlen encourages his readers to try their hand (and eye) at classifying languages. This exercise helps us appreciate the challenges inherent in this fascinating and controversial science of comparative linguistics." --Booklist

"Ruhlen is a leader in the new attempt to write the unified theory of language development and diffusion." --Library Journal

"A powerful statement [and] also a wonderfully clear exposition of linguistic thinking about prehistory. . . . [Q]uite solid and very well presented." --Anthropological Science

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wiley (August 15, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0471159638
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0471159636
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.24 x 0.69 x 9.51 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #534,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #884 in Medical Clinical Psychology
- #924 in Linguistics Reference
- #1,992 in Professional

Customer Reviews:
4.3 58 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Merritt Ruhlen

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

58 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Stefan Mihai Stroe

A book to start/consolidate a school of linguistics (namely, genetic linguistics or linguistic genetics)

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

One of the most challenging books on language. It may be that the idea of a proto-language that all humans once spoke is true. This book will want you to get involved in such research. The ancient languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian will probably be the corner stones that will make this project a reality. But much more is needed still in Sumerian scholarship for this to become a valid theory. But the path is here opened for researches in all linguistic fields, including other related branches of knowledge, such as archeology. A valid principle is used: if words are similar both as form and as meaning, then there are high chances that the two terms stem from the same root. Working with this principle as a foundation will prove immensely helpful in the consolidation of monogenesis (as Greenberg called it) or the theory that finally all human language was once one, unique.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Richard B. Schwartz

A solid but perforce limited introduction.

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2022

Verified Purchase

This is an interesting book on (broadly) the origin of language. First, it is not a speculative study on how homo sapiens sapiens moved from silence to the articulation of words (or how the Neanderthals might have done so earlier). It is not about Chomsky’s notion of a universal grammar. What it is principally about is the determination of language families (through the tracing of commonalities among a multiplicity of languages) and why we can infer the existence of a proto-language—a single language—that preceded all of the daughter languages in a group of approximately a dozen language families.

Its method is to direct the reader to ‘do this at home’, i.e. to look at a group of words from different languages and infer the families to which these languages might belong. The rhetorical model is to demonstrate to the reader ‘how obvious and easy this is and how commonsensical it is to create a taxonomy through the identification of commonalities’. The attitude is a combative one; people disagree with the author and with some of his illustrious predecessors (Joseph Greenberg, Edward Sapir, e.g.) but their outdated views have been superseded by Greenberg, Sapir, Ruhlen, et al. The latter have not been bedeviled by Indo-European chauvinism and have studied extensively the language families in Africa and the Americas.

Linguistic commonalities are supplemented with genetic information, which very often confirms the makeup of linguistic families. It also includes some information on the development of agriculture and the impact that that might have had on, e.g., migration and concentration of speakers. It all began in Africa, as most now see, and if you’re worried about Indo-European (particularly relevant for English, French, German, etc. speakers) it probably originated in Anatolia. Some potential dates are adduced but this is perforce very tentative since written language began approximately 5,000 years ago and everything before that of a linguistic nature (we do have material culture artefacts, of course) must be inferred and deduced (in Dr. Watson’s sense of the word).

This is, of course, a vast subject and one book can only whet the reader’s appetite for more, but it does whet that appetite. It is written for the general reader, but sometimes the examples given are so extensive that the ‘general reader’ will be tempted to skim.

The book includes a brief bibliography and a set of useful, illustrative maps.

Helpful

J. D. Halabi

Controversial Thesis: All Languages Come from One Source

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2006

Verified Purchase

This is Ruhlen's point. Based on modern similarities, all languages are related, some more distantly than others. At the end there is a "tree" showing the purported relationships between our language families. Ruhlen offers his case; he does not prove it. And with the exception of a handful of words, he does not attempt to recognize *Proto-World. He argues that reconstruction is unnecessary.

This book is for the lay reader. It offers a small group of words from a group of languages, and asks the reader to compare them. In each case the careful reader will find the intended relationships. Thus "The Origin of Language" guides the cooperative reader to accept the existence of language families, and then, and here's the controversial part, to accept the existence of links between families.

At first I found this infuriating. I was not a cooperative reader. After all, I have always known that there are several major language families and several isolates, each separate from the others. Ruhlen hand-picked words that would make his point. But as I read on, I accepted first that he was making a case that I disagreed with and that was likely wrong. And by the end, my previous thinking had been shaken.

"New Synthesis"

"The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue" falls into a category of scholarship that seems to go by the name "new synthesis." Mutually supporting bits of linguistic, archaeological, genetic, and social evidence are woven together to tell the story of humans leaving Africa and spreading, first along the shores of the Indian Ocean and on to New Guinea and Australia, later to the interior and western parts of Eurasia (and even later to the Americas). Authors including Renfrew and Cavelli-Sforza have written, in their own fields, books which fit into this new synthesis. A nice introduction would be Steve Olsen's "Mapping Human History."

Worth a Look

You may not agree with Merritt Ruhlen's thesis. But if you curious about the origins of language, you should take a look at this short volume. Reject it if you will, but at least you will know what the "lumpers," the single origin people are claiming.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

loohoo

Mum's the Word - No Matter the Language!

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2011

Verified Purchase

This book is probably somewhat outdated now, but it is still fraught with knowledge. One of my favorite parts is the chart that illustrates how most language families began used very similar words for common ideas. For example, the word for mother began with the letter or sound of M in many languages across the world. This is only a tiny tidbit of the very interesting information this book offers. Languages may vary across the world, but the idea of a mother, father, milk, and some sort of means of bartering or getting needs and wants through swapping, all are still accounted for in most languages with very similar representations. This book begins helping one crack open the mysteries of our past.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

A. Shuttleworth

Concise, informative, readable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2008

Verified Purchase

Having a love of languages I found this book very interesting. From my own knowledge I was able to identify the families of the languages in the first table before it was explained and don't see any reason to believe this would not also be true in the other language groups that I am not familiar with (contrary to the one star reviewer). This book gave me what I was looking for - a concise introduction to world language distribution.

I also feel that it was necessary to alert the reader to the opposing views which one might find elsewhere, although this was maybe not so elegantly done as it might have been. The connection between language, linguistics and politics is another issue for other books.

This one seems to me a great introduction and walks the difficult line between scientific jargon and readibility very well

Andrew Mitchell

Goes further than most linguistic history analysts.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2014

Verified Purchase

Convincingly argues and demonstrates that all languages derive from a single ancient language. Has interesting comparison charts between all languages and language groups from English to Khoisan in Southern Africa. Dont like the way he writes the book as a student text book where he asks you to compare languages yourself, so you have to label the charts on your own. Its more like a reference book than a book you can read, Ruhlen misses the anecdotal touch that can bring the book alive. He identifies 10 primary words which are common to almost every language. Digit(finger), Fly, Father, Mother etc. I'd like this expanded to 100 by someone, which would be my next buy.

One person found this helpful

lara

In very bad condition.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

I understand it was a second hand book but it stated it was in good condition, it was not. The book looked very dishevelled and there were pencil working outs in the book. Extremely disappointed, it was a birthday present as well for my husband. Not impressed.

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Shipping & Fee Details

Follow the author

Image Unavailable