Brief introduction to topic of this course....

1. Language , Culture, and Society
Linguistics 115
CSU Fresno
Chandra Shekar. Ph. D.

2. Language , Culture, and Society
•Questions addressed in this course:
•What is the relation among major languages of the world,
Culture and society in which these languages spoken,?
•Why languages that in their day seemed utterly irresistible
in their dominance and prestige, spoken across large
regions of the world for thousands of years, were
eventually eclipsed?

3. Scope of this book
• Avenues of research on the history of
Languages
• Close study of a few current languages
• Shallow study of many current languages
• Study of languages through history
• Topic of the present study.
• Study of languages through history

4. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the
World
by Nicholas Ostler
 Ways of recounting the history of the
world.
 Via rise and fall of civilizations
 The (mis)fortunes of nation states
 Socio-economic systems and patterns
(Capitalism, Socialism, Mixed-economic
system, Communism, Princely states)
 Development of Technology (advanced vs.
primitive)
 Chronology of war and military prowess
(military might)
 Cultural and linguistic dominance

5. Empires of the Word
 Story of rise and fall of languages
◦ Reasons for the rise and fall of languages.
◦ Resulting rise and fall of cultures and
civilizations.

6. History of Languages
 Languages and their cultural
contributions studied in ‘Empires of
the word’.
◦ Sumerian Akkadian
◦ Phoenician Egyptian
◦ Assyrian Persian
◦ Arabic Hebrew
◦ Turkish Chinese
◦ Sanskrit Russian
◦ German French
◦ Greek English

7. History of Languages
 The book concentrates on those
languages that have been - in some
form or another - globally influential:
they include Sumerian, Akkadian,
Egyptian, Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek,
Latin, and the main European
languages, not the least, English.

8. Languages of the World
About 16 language phyla, about 6000 languages spoken today
phylum group of related language families
family group of related languages
language group of related dialects
dialect group of related idiolects
idiolect speech of an individual
Indo-European Mong-Mien Families
/ | |
English Spanish Hmong Languages
| | | |
American Cuban Green Dialects
| | | |
George Fidel Phong Idiolects

10. Historical Perspective
We’ll take a long, purely historical perspective this semester:
pre-history: before written records
varies geographically
history: after written records (6000 bce)
varies geographically
We’ll be looking only at written languages

11. Major Historical Languages
Empires of the Word covers the following and we’ll do so as
well
• Expansion by land
Sumerian (isolate)
Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic,
Babylonian, Egyptian, Phoenician (all Semitic)
Turkish (Finno-Ugric)
Chinese (Sino-Tibetan)
Greek, Hittite, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit (Indo-European)
• Expansion by sea
French, Spanish, Portguese (Indo-European: Romance)
Russian (Indo-European: Slavic)
Dutch, German, English (Indo-European: Germanic)

12. Language Families
Are Roughly
Related to Genetic
Populations

13. Journey of Mankind
 Type the following URL to view
interactive power point presentation of
the journey of Mankind.
 www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey
www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey

14. Spread of Women (mtDNA)

15. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
 Scientists have used mtDNA to trace
the evolution and migration of human
species.
 Nuclear DNA vs mtDNA
◦ DNA within the cell nucleus (nuclear DNA)
that consists of an estimated 70,000
genes that we inherit from our parents.
◦ mtDNA found in mitochondria that we find
outside the nucleus, but within the cell
structure.

16. Spread of mtDNA
 Fertilization of sperm and egg will
have a mixture of parents DNA, and
an exact copy of mother’s mtDNA.
Father’s mtDNA is left out.
 One can trace the foot prints of
mtDNA in human population.
 Mutations do occur, and through
testing, one can trace the ancestry of
any group of people and all the way
back to the ‘mother of all mothers and
fathers’.

17. Spread of Men (Y-Chromosome)

18. Language must have
spread the same way
 But the dates and maps have yet to be
made. This will probably be done in the
next 20 years.
 All languages, and the cultures and
civilizations associated with these
languages, must have spread along the
paths of human migration over millions of
years.