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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2018
Language and history
Languages expand and contract over time and space. For obvious reasons, this phenomenon attracts linguists, who study language change and its mechanisms. What is less familiar is that this study, apart from its contribution to purely linguistic matters, can yield information which is relevant to historians and archaeologists. This article deals with one type of information: demographic history. More specifically, this contribution centres around the fact that languages spread in two ways:
1. As a result of the propagation of the genes of their speakers – that is, by the multiplication of children speaking the language of their parents and migrating into a new area. If in a previously inhabited area a language primarily spreads in this way, speakers of that language join and often replace speakers of a previously existing language. The result is demographic discontinuity. An example is the expansion of European languages, particularly English, in North America at the expense of Native American languages.
2. As a result of the acculturation of people who previously spoke another language. In this case, it may require only a small number of speakers migrating into a new area in order for the natives to adopt that language and, ultimately, often to abandon their native language. The result of this type of language expansion is demographic continuity. An example is the expansion of French in modern-day Brittany at the expense of Breton.
Normally, the expansion of a language is a blend of both mechanisms, one outweighing the other as a matter of degree. In the case of the expansion of European languages at the expense of Native American languages, demographic replacement strongly outweighed acculturation (cf. Padel 2007, 228–9). In the case of French and Breton, the situation is the reverse (cf. Ternes 2011, 436–9).
The expansion of Latin in the Western Roman Empire is a well-known example of a language that spread primarily as a result of acculturation, although it should be added that it went hand in hand with a minor expansion of people from central Italy. In this particular case, Latin was so successful that it replaced almost all other native languages on Western Roman territory.
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