There are somewhere around 6,000 languages spoken today, spread around the world in varying degrees of diversity and density. Except for the rare isolate, i.e. a language which cannot be connected with any known language, the world's languages belong to one of the approximately 250 families of languages which have been securely identified by historical linguists. It is customary to represent these families in branching diagrams known as family trees. Languages are grouped into family trees according to the number of linguistic features that they share in their respective vocabularies, sound systems, and patterns of grammar; languages which are classified in the same family share a common ancestor by definition. This much has been known for some time.
During the past two decades the face of language classification has changed dramatically, and the NSF sponsored workshop on Alternative Approaches to Language Classification aims to respond to these changes. New developments in this area are due mainly to ongoing advances in classification methodology, and their implications for a deeper understanding not only of language history, but of human history as well. Three distinct, but interlocking currents can be identified in contemporary research streams. The first, based on genetic mapping, attempts to identify the relationship between genetic distance and linguistic affiliation. The second, based on archaeology, studies the relationship between demographic movements of peoples and their implications for the architecture of language trees. Finally, mathematical and computational models employ quantitative methods for the analysis of linguistic relatedness and provide strategies for assessing affiliation and time depth. In this workshop a total of nine specialists, three in each research area, will address these developments over three days of public presentations and debate. Topics include such issues as the geographical and temporal origins of language, the connection between languages and human genetic markers, the deeper relationships among the world's languages, the relationship between population movements and the branching of family trees, and the establishment of temporal zones for the separation of related languages.
