Cristina Moya

So to increase differentiation with neighboring groups, you know, it's tempting to think that language and identity are an obvious set.

But then you have evidence from other parts of the world, like the one that Cristina Moya gathered in The Andes, where language doesn't seem to play almost any role in your identity or how you interact with other groups.

So I think this is a reality that we have to cope with when it comes to language, which is that we have been very successful at coming up with spelled out hypotheses about the ways in which different factors might accelerate or deaccelerate language change and in which directions.

but that those causes have different intensity in different times of history and different populations, which is an absolutely unsatisfying answer for this question.