From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 71618
Date: 2013-11-20
> This is in Nederlands:
>
> http://www.kennislink.nl/publicaties/de-talenrijkdom-van-afrika
>
> But the general point is that the area with the widest range
> of languages in terms of number overall, and in terms of
> phonemic diversity, are in Africa. Which should not be much
> of a surprise since the location of origin for languages in
> general have greater diversity due to divergence over time
> and lack of sustained interaction between dialect groups.
>
> Which leads to the secondary areas of great diversity in
> phonemes and languages in general, New Guinea and
> (pre-contact) Australia.
>
> As for the Caucasus region, if you are accepting of the
> standard model of modern human dispersal out of Africa,
> there are two ways out: through the Sinai Peninsula, and
> more likely through the Arabian Peninsula at the narrow
> southern end of the Red Sea.
>
> What we get from that is a human migration across southern
> Asia and into New Guinea and Australia, which become
> isolated for uncertain reasons, but also become areas of
> high linguistic diversity.
>
> The route to Europe also has two possibilities: through
> Anatolia and across the Caucasus. I am not an expert here,
> but I think that Anatolia had much linguistic diversity
> before Greeks and Persians began fighting over it.
>
> The Caucasus is much less hospitable to human civilization,
> and may function as an isolating region, both from a general
> definition of isolation from peoples outside of the region,
> and within the region in a manner similar to New Guinea:
> small groups of people who have difficulty traveling across
> a mountainous area.
>
> Now to get super-speculative. The Caucasus was also a region
> where Homo sapiens neandertalis survived the longest and
> interbred with Homo sapiens sapiens. If they had language,
> some of this language may have contributed to the diversity
> of languages in the Caucasus region both in terms of
> phonemic diversity and general language diversity.
>
> Again, that is highly speculative.
>
> But overall, phonemic diversity seems to exist to the
> greatest extent in regions where you'd think it would: the
> area of origin of modern humans (Sub-Saharan Africa) and in
> areas that were colonized early that had barriers to mixing
> of groups (New Guinea, Australia, Caucasus).
>
> [Quote-tail deleted. -BMS]
>