Explaining Global Patterns of Language Diversity

The six and a half thousand languages spoken by humankind are very unevenly distributed across the globe. Language diversity generally increases as one moves from the poles toward the equator and is very low in arid environments. Two belts of extremely high language diversity can be identified. One runs through West and Central Africa, while the other covers South and South-East Asia and the Pacific. Most of the world's languages are found in these two areas. This paper attempts to explain aspects of the global distribution of language diversity. It is proposed that a key factor influencing it has been climatic variability. Where the climate allows continuous food production throughout the year, small groups of people can be reliably self-sufficient and so populations fragment into many small languages. Where the variability of the climate is greater, the size of social network necessary for reliable subsistence is larger, and so languages tend to be more widespread. A regression analysis relating the number of languages spoken in the major tropical countries to the variability of their climates is performed and the results support the hypothesis. The geographical patterning of languages has, however, begun to be destroyed by the spread of Eurasian diseases, Eurasian people, and the world economy.     

断代通史著作的成功尝试

中国社会科学院近代史研究所组织编撰的《中国近代通史》近期已由江苏人民出版社出版。全书共10卷,约550万字,各卷名称如下:第1卷《近代中国历史进程概说》,第2卷《近代中国的开端(1840—1864)》,第3卷《早期现代化的尝试(1865—1895)》,第4卷《从戊戌维新到义和团(1895—1900)》,第5卷《新政、立宪与辛亥革命(1901—1912)》,第6卷《民国的初建(1912—1923)》,第7卷《国共合作与国民革命(1924—1927)》,第8卷《内战与危机(1927—1937)》,第9卷《抗日战争(1937—1945)》,第10卷《中国命运的决战(1945—1949)》。本书的出版,完成了近代史研究所几代人的夙愿。对于1840—1949年完整的中国近代史来说,本书的撰写还是一个尝试。本刊特别约请我国近代史学界几位著名学者通过笔谈的形式发表看法,以期引起关注和讨论。     

日喀则旅游发展模式研究

本通过对日喀则地区旅游发展条件的综合分析,提出了以政府启动、交通引动、外资促动、国际联动、开放推动和全域化、生态化、网络化、差异化、小型化为核心的“日喀则旅游发展模式”,并确立了发展战略体系。     

《鄞江送别图》考析

本就《鄞江送别图》创作的历史背景与时间、地点、人物和作及其艺术特色进行分析和考证。     

A Linguistic Survey of Khorasan: Implications for Language Isolation,Language Change,and Contact Linguistics

This paper describes and analyzes data from a number of Modern Iranian dialects spoken in Khorasan in the east of Iran which are unusual among the other Western Iranian languages in that they have grammaticalized a split tense-sensitive alignment in indexation, compared to other Iranian languages whose indexation splitness is sensitive to both tense and transitivity. These dialects are the former dialect of Birjand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the present-day dialect of Ferdows, Khanik, and Se-Ghal’e. The findings are put in the context of the available data from the Classical Persian texts to show that the tense-sensitive splitness mentioned above is traceable in those texts. A number of external factors are discussed which seem to have been influential in the restructuring of the split-alignment of the former dialect of Birjand into a uniformly nominative-accusative alignment in terms of indexation as observed in the present-day dialect of Birjand. It is proposed that this restructuring is an instance of simplification. The three other dialects cited above are endangered in the sense that they can undergo the same kind of restructuring as happened to the dialect of Birjand.     

集市:民俗学理解日常生活的新视野

集市是广泛存在于世界各地区各民族的商品交易形式,也是地方社会生活在空间上的浓缩。以流动为特征的集市为地方性知识的生成与表述、民俗关系的搭建与互动提供了场域,是区域性生活实践、文化变迁和社区整合的动力源泉。民俗学对集市中民俗事象、时空特征和实践活动的关注,可在超越村落边界的基础上,透视人群交往、文化交流和物品交换之间的关系,从而拓展民俗学的研究视野,深化对日常生活的理解,提升民俗学理论方法的活力;同时,民俗学的学术关怀可以进一步充实集市研究的生活感、文化性与应用性,丰富有关集市当代转型和乡村社会建设等议题的讨论,体现学科服务社会发展的现实关切。     

A.F. Pollard*

A.F. Pollard is now better remembered for founding the Institute of Historical Research than he is for his scholarship. In his heyday, however, Pollard was a formidable and prolific historian, primarily of parliament and the Tudor period. Pollard has been characterised both as a modernist and as a whig historian. Rejecting romantic invocations of liberty, he extolled instead the sovereign nation state, pinpointing the 16th century as the moment when it was achieved. Pollard rejected anachronistic accounts of parliament's development: for him, the assembly had grown by accident (out of the medieval king's council), rather than by design. This adaptability had ensured parliament's longevity and would preserve it into the future. Pollard revered the English parliament all the more for its embodiment of this national good fortune. Pollard helped to professionalise the discipline of history, but his own writings could be found wanting when measured against the standards that he had advocated. Criticism of his approach and assumptions comes easily now. Yet, upon reacquaintance, historians of parliament may find enduring interest in Pollard's shrewd and extensive work.