Language diversity in aboriginal Europe

[nancylebov]

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=980

* “Other things being equal, density of lineages is substantially greater at low latitudes than at high latitudes.” (Nichols 1990:484)
* “Other things being equal, the coastal area of a continent will generally have substantially greater lineage density than the interior. Not every coastal area is high in lineage density, but the extensive areas of high density are all on or near coastlines. … [Because of its richer resources, the] seacoast offers the possibility of economic self-sufficiency for a small group occupying a small territory.” (ibid. pp. 484-5)
* “The discrepancy in the lineage density of coastline and interior is most pronounced where the interior is relatively dry … . (ibid. p. 485)
* “The cause of high lineage density in mountain areas is generally attributed to the fact that mountainous geography naturally isolates populations, resists large-scale economic integration, and creates refuge zones.” (ibid. p. 485)
* “Density of lineages is low in areas dominated by large-scale economies,
higher in areas with smaller-scale economies. … Reduction of lineage
density in response to increased scale of economy is not immediate, as
shown by the ancient Near East.” (ibid. p. 486)

As far as I can tell, "lineage density" means the amount of language variation.

Anyone want to nominate fantasy writers for getting this sort of thing especially right or wrong? I'm not enough of an expert on Tolkien to do a detailed evaluation and I realize he was working from the knowledge available in his time, but how close did he get?

Link thanks to thnidu.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

It is analogous to speciation by isolated or independent populations

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I believe that I made references to that in GURPS Fantasy, though I couldn't go into it in any depth. But I had been started on reading historical and comparative linguistics by Nichols's "Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time," an entire book devoted to the topic, and one well worth reading.

Tolkien's linguistic history has some general resemblance to what Nichols describes; he has wide areas where the speakers of a given language spread out from a point of origin. In fact, he shows three waves: the spread of Quenya at the start of the First Age, of the Black Speech during Sauron's conquest of Middle-Earth in the Second Age, and of Adunaic after the return of Elendil and his sons at the very end of the Second Age. I'm not sure how the Common Speech relates to Adunaic any more; I have the impression that it's a later form of it, but I can't easily reconcile that with its kinship to the speech of Rohan. And on the other hand, you have clear examples of refuge tongues: Khuzdul in the mountain cities of the dwarves, and Sindarin in the surviving elven communities of Lorien, Mirkwood, Rivendell, and the Grey Havens. But his world has far more linguistic uniformity than the real world, both spatially (only a handful of languages on an entire continent) and temporally (word histories can be traced back many thousands of years). Perhaps this is most simply explained by the fact that Tolkien had to invent all those languages . . . and one linguist, however brilliant and however obsessed with his hobby, can only do so much.

I haven't seen similar linguistic sophistication in any other work of fantasy. Though S. M. Stirling's series starting with "Dies the Fire" is moving steadily from science fiction to high fantasy in tone, and it shows some informed thought about both linguistic and cultural evolution. Stirling is clearly influenced by Tolkien, though, as can be seen in his portrayal of the emergence of Sindarin as a living language in one post-collapse community in Oregon . . . and its acquisition of coinages and loan words for concepts that Tolkien didn't supply, ranging from "cheeseburger with fries" to "duh!" There's one hilarious scene where two young women sing in Sindarin, and the song turns out to be "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell."

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

You're selling Tolkien short on the linguistic side.

Westron (the "common tongue") was based on the root language of the non-Numenorean men inhabiting the West when Elendil founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. These realms, for two millenia after their founding at least, effectively controlled an economic area that stretched from sea to beyond the Lonely Mountain in the east, from snowline to Near Harad in the south. These lands contained a broad variety of not merely cultures but species, each with its own language linguistically alien to that of the other species.

With as much commerce and trading as went on (and, even up to the time of the Ring, in spite of orcs, dragons, and whatever else, still continued), a common tongue was pretty much essential. As French was from the 17th Century through Napoleon, and as English was thereafter, so Westron was.

The elements of Rohan speech that appear in Westron, as Tolkien himself pointed out, were entirely hobbit borrowings, from a time when the two peoples inhabited a common area (by the Anduin, between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood). They weren't part of the common tongue for most groups.

Despite what I just said, Tolkien quite literally littered his text with toss-off linguistic islands. Dwarvish and all flavors of Elvish count; so do the languages of the Dunlendings and the Woses, and of course the Ents. Most notable in this regard is Orcish; although all Orc speech derives, ultimately, from Morgoth's Black Speech, orc tribes are so unintelligible to one another in it that they use Westron for cross-tribal communication- to the point that, without Sauron's influence, Orcish would probably vanish from use altogether.

The worst example here is Dunlandish, of which we're given no examples- merely the pat statement that it's different from both Westron and the language of Rohan. Dunland sits foursquare across the old South Road of Arnor, once a major trade artery- and, as Saruman's manipulation of the Shire proved, still an occasional channel of inter-land commerce. The fact that most of Dunland apparently knows nothing of the common tongue is, culturally and economically, an absurdity- doubly so since we also get told that the men of Bree are of the same stock, yet speak nothing but Westron.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

Both complaints about the Dunlendings assume that Eriador was passable during the last fifteen hundred years or so of the Third Age. It is in the time of the War of the Rings, but there is considerable reason to doubt it before that. Rhudaur and Cardolan were states of the Undead, and they didn't need no stinking commerce. Even armies went by sea in Arvedui's time.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Correction; Rhudaur was conquered by Angmar first. Cardolan wasn't overrun until the very end; its royal line just died out.

And armies from Gondor went by sea for reasons of logistics and speed; it's faster to sail than to march, much faster indeed. At the time Gondor was still very strong and could have cut their way through any opposition that might have presented itself- as, indeed, they destroyed Angmar's army in the final battle over Arnor.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

One point to make is that nearly all the language-using species in Tolkien have longer lifespans than humans on this version of Earth. Some are potentially immortal (Elves, Ents), some live decidedly longer (dwarves)... and even hobbits and Middle-Earth humans appear to have longer average lifespans than what we've got. Only orcs have relatively short lives... and look what happened to their languages.

When speakers of a language in a certain way tend to hang around for a long long time, the language won't change as quickly. So, certainly with respect to Entish, Quenya, Sindarin and other Elvish tongues, I'm not surprised at relative stability and uniformity.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

But his world has far more linguistic uniformity than the real world, both spatially (only a handful of languages on an entire continent) and temporally (word histories can be traced back many thousands of years). Perhaps this is most simply explained by the fact that Tolkien had to invent all those languages . . . and one linguist, however brilliant and however obsessed with his hobby, can only do so much.

My impression is that the populations in Middle Earth were on the low side. Could this be an explanation for the relative lack of linguistic diversity?
Or would the low populations mean that groups would be more widely dispersed, so you'd still have more languages? Or was Middle Earth population size comparable to the real world, so far as either can be determined?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Not dispersed; Middle-Earth seems to have massive depopulated regions. Civilization in Eriador seems to consist of the Shire and Bree, Rivendell, elves and dwarves in Lindon/the Blue Mountains, and Rangers lurking up north like Bujoldian Lakewalkers (or the other way around, natch.) And nothing else for hundreds of miles; humans in Eriador are practically an endangered species, just a few villages on the east of the Shire.

Then you've got two big empty provinces separating Eriador from Rohan and Gondor.

self-promotion: http://mindstalk.net/tradeInMiddleEarth.html

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen similar linguistic sophistication in any other work of fantasy.

Check out M. A. R. Barker's Tekumel, if you haven't already. Like Tolkien he is a linguist who has worked on one SF world all his life,and gone into great detail on the languages.

Tekumel stuff was first published as a tabletop role-playing game, and later as novels.

At one point there were netbooks out there with a lot of detail on the languages, but I'm not sure if they are still available.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Well, the main thing Tolkien got wrong is the whole idea that technology goes backwards. Remember: in the three thousand years from Sauron losing the ring to the time of Frodo, men lost technological knowledge and apparently never gained any new knowledge. This theme of a lost Golden Age is, of course, classic stuff for mythological tales like Tolkien wanted to create, but from a historical perspective it's absurd.

To put it in perspective, three thousand years ago Solomon ruled a kingdom that dominated the Levant, the Trojan War was fought, and the ultimate weapon of war was the chariot. Since then, the following technological advances have been achieved:

* Iron forging on the large scale (about 2500 years old)
* The horsecollar and deep plow (about 1000 years old)
* Crop rotation (1300 years old)
* Ships with skeleton frames (800 years old)
* The counterweight trebuchet (2000 years old, approx.)
* Basic anatomy (2100 years)
* Optics (500 years)
* Concrete (2400 years)
* The screw (2500 years)
* The magnetic compass (700 years)
* Euclidean geometry (2400 years)
* The steam engine (400 years, not counting a certain Greek toy)
* Gunpowder (about 1300 years)
* Phonetic alphabets (2800 years)
* Positional numerals (2000 years)
* Solar calendar (2300 years)
* Flying buttresses (1900 years)
* Keystone arches (2400 years)
* Distillation (less than 1000 years)

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head, deliberately excluding anything from 1800 on- electrical appliances, canning, the Bessemer steel process, the internal combustion engine, Boolean logic and the computation machines derived from them, etc. Even leaving out the last two centuries, life for the ordinary man had changed VASTLY from three millenia prior- the vast majority of it forward progress.

I've been seriously tempted, now and again, to do a version of LotR in which technology has advanced as it would in our world. (Can't you see Merry and Pippin saying, "ROAD TRIP!"?)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've heard that crop rotation was partially lost for a while after the fall of the Roman empire-- the general public didn't do it, but it was maintained in (some?) monasteries.

The other weird thing about technology in LOTR is that apparently hobbits have higher non-magical tech than anyone else, for no in-book reason.

Shippey implies a plausible out-of-book reason: hobbits are modern compared to the other races, and provide an entry point for modern readers to an ancient world.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

More to the point, the hobbits are the only peacetime culture we get any look at at all, and very nearly the only culture we see from the point of view of the ordinary citizen. Everyplace else we see either from the point of view of war leaders or during a prolonged state of emergency (usually both).

Probably Gondor has flour mills, a postal system, a prosperous merchant class, etc.- when it's not under total mobilization against Mordor.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I thought hobbits have pocket watches and folding umbrellas which suggest better metal-working than exists elsewhere in Middle Earth. Maybe they just got a couple of unusual items from the Dwarves.

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

A couple of quibbles:

Crop rotation - while not actual modern crop rotation, the Biblical rule of leaving the fields fallow one year in seven shows some consciousness of the need of the land to rest from heavy cultivation. Which would be pre-Solomonic.

Steam engine (400 years) - more like 300 years, the first attempts were about 1690, and the first practical steam engine was around 1695 or 1703 (Papin's atmospheric steam engine). Oddly enough, the internal combustion engine slightly predates this - Huygens was looking for peaceful uses of gunpowder, and he exploded some in a cylinder, it blew the air out through one-way valves, and then atmospheric pressure slammed the piston down. That's how Papin's initial steam engines worked as well. So you only get useful work during the half-cycle where the air is pressing the piston down. Newcomen made it work for both halves of the cycle, and Watt took the boiler out of the cylinder, which made for the modern steam engine.

I wrote a paper on all this in college.

Optics (500 years) - probably a bit more, there are medieval eyeglasses, particularly Venetian c. 1300.

Phonetic alphabets (2800 years): what exactly is that? Syllabary vs. ideographic vs. letters? Probably a bit earlier than that, cuneiform in later versions was a syllabary, and Proto-Canaanite which became Hebrew, and Greek was more phonetic, which go back more like 3500 years.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I was thinking specifically of the three-field system; cash crop, nitrogenating crop, fallow, or whatever order it was in.

I'll give you the correction on the steam engine, but not internal combustion; Huygens never actually built that gunpowder engine, if memory serves. Attempts to build it since have proven that gunpowder is too powerful, too uneven, and too difficult to stream for a practical fuel.

I was thinking specifically Phonecian alphabet, which my memory places at about 700 B. C.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, "lineage density" means the amount of language variation.

A little bit more precise than that. communicator has a good analogy, "It is analogous to speciation by isolated or independent populations". "Language variation" would count, say, French, Provençal, Catalán, Basque, and Spanish as 5 languages. But all of those except Basque are closely related, some subsets more closely than others, while Basque is totally unrelated to any of them (or anything else, as far as anybody has been able to establish). Ringe says

In the following discussion note that “lineages” refers to genetic units of any size—languages, obvious families (such as Germanic or Romance or Slavic), or “stocks” (differentiated families of the largest size discoverable by scientific methods, such as Indo-European); it is assumed that comparisons will be made between comparable units in evaluating an area’s linguistic diversity.

So Nichols's generalizations about lineage density, which are all expressed as comparisons, should be taken as always referring to the same approximate level on both or all sides of the comparison. To take it to extremes: in testing her statement that "Density of lineages is low in areas dominated by large-scale economies, higher in areas with smaller-scale economies," it would be wrong to compare the variety of dialects (including "accents") of English spoken in the northeastern United States with the variety of unrelated languages spoken in a comparable area of Papua New Guinea.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Point taken.

Might language history be more like evolution for bacteria than for multi-cellular life?

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

That's a fair analogy, although horizontal transmission of genes has been discovered in nudibranchs

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

ehhhh... I see what you mean -- bacteria can trade genes -- but I'd rather avoid such analogies altogether.