Indigenous Languages of The Americas - Origins

Origins

In American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America (1997), Lyle Campbell lists several hypotheses for the historical origins of Amerindian languages.

  1. A single, one-language migration (currently not widely accepted)
  2. A few linguistically distinct migrations (favored by Edward Sapir)
  3. Multiple migrations
  4. Multilingual migrations (single migration with multiple languages)
  5. The influx of already diversified but related languages from the Old World
  6. Extinction of Old World linguistic relatives (while the New World ones survived)
  7. Migration along the Pacific coast instead of the Bering Strait

Roger Blench (2008) advocates for multiple migrations along the Pacific coast of peoples from northeastern Asia who already spoke diverse languages.

Read more about this topic:  Indigenous Languages Of The Americas

Famous quotes containing the word origins:

    The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.
    Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)

    Grown onto every inch of plate, except
    Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
    Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
    Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
    The origins of art.
    Howard Moss (b. 1922)

    Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.
    W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)