On Language Contact and Language Alliance (Explanation of Sino-Vietnamese (Tai-Kadai) Etymological Relationships)

Author: Chen Baoyu
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: In the 19th century, historical comparative linguistics believed that language evolution followed only one pattern: a single parent language continuously diverging into a family tree of related languages. The author of this book, through tracking the contact between Tai and Chinese, argues that language evolution has two fundamentally different models: the family tree model represented by the Indo-European language family and the language alliance model represented by the Sinitic-Austroasiatic alliance.