LINGUIST List 14.1295

Wed May 7 2003

Media: Farming and Language-Spread?

Editor for this issue: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar <aristarlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. linguist, World's Farmers Sowed Languages as Well as Seeds?

The New York Times published in its Science section on Monday, May, 6
2003, an article on a book written by Dr. Jared Diamond of the
University of California at Los Angeles and Dr. Peter Bellwood of the
Australian National University. This book claims -- in a way that is
reminiscent of Colin Renfrew's thesis on Indo-European -- that
language families show the geographical distribution they do because
of the spread of farming, which caused the expansion of the languages
spoken by those population groups which had taken up farming as a way
of life.

The article is available at the following URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/science/06LANG.html