Where can I find theories on the origins and relationships between present-day languages?

Question

I realise that this is to a large extent speculative. So far I have read "The origin and diversification of language" by Morris Swadesh. Any books, websites or organisations welcome

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythical_origins_of_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_language
I hope it helps.

Answer 2

Some of it is speculative and some of it isn't! For example, we know very well indeed where French, Italian, Spanish etc came from, as well as the relationship between them. Moreover, no one seriously doubts that English, Russian, Persian, Hindi, Romanian, Welsh and Armenian (to name a few) are related to each other. The devil, as always, is in the detail.

There are many books on these Indo-European languages: just type "Indo-European" and "Proto-Indo-European" into amazon, and you'll get lots of hits. There are fewer books on other language families, and they're often more technical, so maybe your local library is a good bet: find what you like and go from there.

I would warn you of one thing, however: be extremely sceptical of anyone promoting the idea of Proto-World, Nostratic, Eurasiatic, and other super-families. Most of the work on them is very poor and held in low esteem by most linguistic scholars. They really are highly speculative and dubious. To a slightly lesser extent, the same goes for Greenberg's work on native American languages. Although few would dispute that many of these languages are related to each other, the methods employed by Greenberg in establishing the relationships leave much to be desired.

Answer 3

Try getting a copy of Frederic Bodmer's book 'The Loom of Language'. You might find a copy on Amazon's market place.

It explains the relationship, similarities and differences between different romance and germanic languages and how they evolved.

Answer 4

a starter is found here