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Bob Dixon?s The Rise and Fall of Languages is a book that should be read by anyone studying linguistics or interested in the history of languages.
From his studies of Australian, Pacific and South American languages Dixon has come to the conclusion that rather than languages existing like species with a genetic line of descent linking ?parent? and ?daughter? languages, most languages in fact are constantly influencing and being influenced by neighbouring languages whether related or not, in the same way that other cultural phenomena influence and are influenced by others. In this view the most important factor in the existence of a language is the way it comes to share similar features and vocabulary with neighbouring languages, not the extent to which it exemplifies a descent from a common ancestor with other languages.
Dixon believes that languages exist in a state of punctuated equilibrium. In any given area languages of different stocks co-exist for thousands of years and grow more and more similar over time as they share features. Sudden changes can happen where a new language or languages arrive in the area and this can set the scene for a period where the new suite of languages in that area do differ widely for a time. Europe, in the model, would still be in the aftermath of the arrival of Indo-European languages (whenever this was), and so the different genetic stocks are still well marked (ie Germanic languages versus Romance languages versus Slavic languages). The fact that written standards have controlled some European languages for over two millennia has also reinforced the unnaturally genetic nature of this linguistic area.
However even in Europe there are areas where languages are converging, notably the famous Balkan Sprachbund, where Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian had begun, by the Middle Ages, to share grammatical and syntactic features, even though they each belong to a different genetic family.
Dixon?s prose is clear and his ideas are fresh. This is a work written to be appreciated and I hope that many readers will buy it and read it.
