The rise of agricultural production and subsequent shift in subsistence modes that took place during the Holocene appears to have been accompanied by profound social change: increased food production led to higher population density and more sedentary living patterns, which fostered larger group size and social stratification. Since demographic and social constraints such as stratification and mobility are known to affect language variation and change, there might be systematic differences between agriculturalists and HGs. Indeed, numerous claims have been made, including absence of generic flora-fauna terms; abnormally high (or low) rates of borrowing; and fewer (or less complex) subordination strategies in clause formation.
Work presented here, based on qualitative and quantitative surveys of HG languages in Australia, Amazonia and North America, reveals that thus far that many previously identified tendencies in hunter-gatherer languages disappear when areally balanced samples are considered. Apart from correlations in numeral inventory size and HG groups, the only other significant factor identified thus far in our work is population mobility; languages spoken by mobile groups tend to have higher loan rates. Other socially-grounded factors show extensive variation, presumably a reflection of the fact that while HG societies tend to be non-hierarchical, they are not simple; there are social categories encoded in HG languages just like in agriculturalist ones (if not the more familiar social variables such as social class).
There is also some suggestion in the data that hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist languages together appear to pattern differently from large urban languages like Japanese, English and Arabic.
See more of: Brain and Behavior
See more of: Symposia