ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Laureate to tackle mystery of world’s languages

Distinguished Professor Nicholas Evans of ANU

The tongue-twisting riddle of why the world has so many languages may soon have an answer, thanks to a major funding win by one of the world’s top linguists.

Distinguished Professor Nicholas Evans from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific has won a prestigious Laureate Fellowship worth more than $3.1 million from the Australian Research Council.

He is one of 17 researchers from around Australia and one of four ANU academics to receive part of the $47 million on offer in the 2013 round of Laureate Fellowships.

Evans, who is based in the College’s School of Culture, History and Language, will use the research funding to explore the causes of language diversity across the globe.

With the world having more than 6,000 languages and diversity high in areas like New Guinea and Indigenous Australia, Evans’ research is a hot topic of conversation in the world of linguistics.

“A quarter of the world’s languages are spoken in our region,” said Evans. “This will project will tackle the riddle of why there are so many languages in parts of the world like Australia and New Guinea, and so few in others.

“The question is a vital one, because understanding the causes of language diversity will help countries and communities in our region maintain their rich linguistic heritage.”

According to Evans, the answer to the question may lie in the size of different societies.

“It’s possible that high instances of linguistic diversity results from greater differences between how people speak in small-scale societies than in larger-scale societies.

“This itself reflects the different uses to which language is put in conveying social information like clan membership, as well as the greater pool of structures for children to draw on in the highly multilingual environments found in small-scale societies,” said Evans.

“We will test this idea by looking at case studies on languages from Arnhem Land, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

“The result will give insight into the puzzle of why humans as a species have so frequently evolved languages that limit who we can communicate with, as well as how linguistic traditions of local communities may erode or be maintained.”

In addition to being named an Australian Laureate Fellow, Evans is a Corresponding Fellow of The British Academy – the highest honour the Academy can confer in recognition of scholarly distinction and international standing. He has also recently received honours for his research from Germany (the Anneliese-Maier Research Prize, which is the highest prize awarded in Germany for the humanities) and the United States (the Ken Hale Award, which recognises outstanding work on endangered langugaes).

Evans is the fifth researcher from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific to win a Laureate Fellowship in the last three years, with professors Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Susan O’Connor receiving fellowships in 2012 and professors Margaret Jolly and Hilary Charlesworth winning funding in 2010.