Lectures by Johanna Nichols, University of California, Berkeley

Linguistic diversity in space and time: An introduction to geolinguistics 

In some parts of the world (such as the Caucasus, the Pacific coast of North America or the north of Australia) there are very many different languages of different types; in other places (such as the Eurasian steppe, southern Australia, and North Africa) there are fewer languages. Some language families have very many descendent languages (e.g., Austronesian, 1000+ languages) and some have few (e.g. Kartvelian, four languages) or just one (e.g., Basque, Burushaski, Korean, Zuni). Some languages have hundreds of millions of speakers and some have just a few hundred. Some languages have very complex grammars and some are much simpler.  Some structural properties of languages are common worldwide; some are rare. 

Why?

This course introduces students to the factors that are responsible for these uneven distributions: accidents of geography, economic history, and interactions between speakers and societies. Today's globalization, in its effects on languages, is a large-scale illustration of these factors, and this course will look briefly at some prehistoric and historical examples when the same process has applied at sub-global scales.