this isn't what i mostly work on, and i'm busy just now, but i'd start here.
remember that in a lot of cases, what's happened has been less that people go off and found different languages and stop speaking to each other, and more that people spread out and keep speaking to their neighbors but not the people a few hundred miles down the road. the consolidation of regions of such a continuum into ‘languages’ is something that often happens for political reasons and in some cases remains little more than a political fiction.
also, note that languages - even unrelated languages will borrow fro each other when they come into contact. even ignoring things we think of as recent foreign borrowings, there are plenty of English names that look like imports from French, Classical Greek, and probably Welsh.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-11-19 05:31 pm (UTC)remember that in a lot of cases, what's happened has been less that people go off and found different languages and stop speaking to each other, and more that people spread out and keep speaking to their neighbors but not the people a few hundred miles down the road. the consolidation of regions of such a continuum into ‘languages’ is something that often happens for political reasons and in some cases remains little more than a political fiction.
also, note that languages - even unrelated languages will borrow fro each other when they come into contact. even ignoring things we think of as recent foreign borrowings, there are plenty of English names that look like imports from French, Classical Greek, and probably Welsh.