The Language of Hunter-Gatherers

Hunter-gatherers are often portrayed as 'others' standing outside the main trajectory of human social evolution. But even after eleven millennia of agriculture and two centuries of widespread industrialization, hunter-gatherer societies continue to exist. This volume, using the lens of language, offers us a window into the inner workings of twenty-first-century hunter-gatherer societies - how they survive and how they interface with societies that produce more. It challenges long-held assumptions about the limits on social dynamism in hunter-gatherer societies to show that their languages are no different either typologically or sociolinguistically from other languages. With its worldwide coverage, this volume serves as a report on the state of hunter-gatherer societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and readers in all geographical areas will find arguments of relevance here.

Part I. Introductory Chapters: 1. Hunter-gatherer anthropology and language Tom Güldemann, Patrick McConvell and Richard Rhodes; 2. Genetic landscape of present day hunter-gatherer groups Ellen Gunnasdóttir and Mark Stoneking; 3. Linguistc typology and hunter-gatherer languages Balthasar Bickel and Johanna Nichols; 4. Ethnobiology and the hunter-gatherer/food-producer divide Cecil Brown; Part II. Africa: 5. Hunters and gatherers in East Africa and the case of Ontoga (Southwest Ethiopia) Mauro Tosco and Graziano Savà; 6. The Khoe-Kwadi family in Southern Africa Tom Güldemann; Part III. Tropical Asia: 7. Hunter-gatherers in South and Southeast Asia: the Mla-Bri Jørgen Rischel; 8. Languages in the Malay Peninsula Niclas Burenhult; 9. Language in the Andaman Islands Juliette Blevins; 10. Historical linguistics and Philippine hunter-gatherers Lawrence A. Reid; 11. Hunter-gatherers of Borneo and their languages Antonia Soriente; Part IV. New Guinea and Australia: 12. The linguistic situation in near Oceana before agriculture Malcolm Ross; 13. Language, locality and lifestyle in New Guinea Mark Donahue; 14. Small language survival and large language expansion in aboriginal Australia Peter Sutton; 15. Language and population shift in pre-colonial Australia: non-Pama-Nyungan languages Mark Harvey; 16. The spread of Pama-Nyungan in Australia Patrick McConvell; Part V. Northeastern Eurasia: 17. Typological accommodation in central Siberia Edward J. Vadja; 18. Hunter-gatherers in Eastern Siberia Gregory D. S. Anderson and K. David Harrison; Part VI. North America: 19. Primitivism in hunter and gatherer languages: the case of Eskimo words for snow Willem J. de Reuse; 20. Language shift in the Subarctic and central Plains Richard A. Rhodes; 21. Uto-Aztecan hunter-gatherers Jane H. Hill; Part VII. South America: 22. Language and subsistence patterns in the Amazonian Vaupés Patience Epps; 23. The Southern Plains and the Continental Tip Alejandra Vidal and José Braunstein.

Tom Güldemann is Professor for African linguistics and sociolinguistic at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He specializes in African linguistics with a particular focus on languages subsumed under 'Khoisan' in the Kalahari Basin area of southern Africa as well as on Bantu and wider Niger-Congo.
Patrick McConvell has worked on Australian Indigenous languages especially in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. He has published extensively on the social history of Hunter-gatherer languages in general, and language shift, code-switching and mixing of languages.
Richard A. Rhodes is Associate Professor of Linguistics at University of California, Berkeley and an internationally recognized expert in Algonquian studies. His recent work has focused on descriptive syntax and nineteenth-century-Ojibwe/Ottawa documents.