Merritt Ruhlen
American linguist known for work on global language classification and long-range comparison. A collaborator of Joseph Greenberg, he advocated mass comparison and proposed macrofamily relationships. His books include A Guide to the World’s Languages and The Origin of Language; his views were influential and controversial in historical linguistics.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. The Origin Of Language
Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
Presents a controversial case that all human languages descend from a single ancestral tongue, using long-range comparison and proposed global etymologies to group languages into macrofamilies. It integrates linguistic patterns with evidence from archaeology and genetics to trace deep-time relationships and human dispersal, addresses common criticisms of the approach, and defends mass comparison as a viable tool for reconstruction.
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