Project Outline

The Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (FLDH) holds that the spread of agricultural technologies and the spread of languages are often interrelated. The hypothesis originates with the work of Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew. Representative research includes Renfrew (1987), Diamond & Bellwood (2003), and the collection of papers edited by Bellwood & Renfrew (2002). Bellwood's (2004) book First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies was translated in to Japanese by Toshiki Osada and Yoichiro Sato in 2008.

The FLDH has been applied to language families including Austronesian, Bantu, Indo-European, and Uto-Aztecan. Recent work has begun to focus on the applicability of the hypothesis to East Asia. Hudson (1999) applies the hypothesis to the issue of ethnogenesis in the Japanese archipelago, while Miyamoto (2009) makes reference to the hypothesis in reference to the spread of irrigated rice farming technology to the archipelago. In more recent research, the papers in Fiskesjö & Hsing (2011) examine the relation between the spread of rice agriculture and language family dispersal in East, Southeast, and South Asia. However such work is still in its infancy, and awaits more detailed collaboration between human and plant geneticists, archaeologists, and linguists. Recent advances in human, animal and plant DNA studies, advances in archaeobotany, and advances in dating techniques all call for increased collaboration between these fields. Areas such as East Asia raise an additional issue: to what extent can the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis be applied on a microscale, to examine the possible relation between the distribution of farming practices (crop types, crop varieties, agricultural technologies) and dialects or related languages within a single language area?

The current project is centered on the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) and the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), with affiliated researchers at institutes and universities throughout Japan and abroad. It seeks to examine the implications of the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis for the Japanese archipelago, East Asia, and the Pacific. It is an exploratory project (準備研究) supported by the National Institutes for the Humanities. During its initial two and one-half years, the project will feature joint project meetings of its members and international symposia hosting experts from abroad. The project aims to publish its central research findings in international journals and other forums. In addition to investigation of the FLDH itself, the project seeks to foster intellectual exchange between linguists, plant and human geneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists. The chief focus of the project will be on two points: first, an emphasis on collaborative research among geneticists, archaeologists, linguists, and historians, and a focus on examining the interrelation between language and agricultural technology dispersal at the microlevel. Language families examined will include major families of insular and mainland Northeast Asia (Ainu, Japonic, Korean, Tungusic, and others), where research applying the FLDH is still in its infancy, and families such as Austronesian, where such research has a longer history. Secondly, the project will attempt to test the applicability of the FLDH to relatively shallow dispersals, such as those involving dialect-level divergences within established language families. Special attention will be paid to the matter of the diversification of the languages and dialects of Japonic.

Project leader

John Whitman, Department of Crosslinguistic Studies, NINJAL