Languages of Kohistan

At a macro level, this work is definitely an improvement over Grierson's Linguistics Survey of India and the subsequent studies by various scholars. However, though ambitious in scope, the study does not claim to be exhaustive and comprehensive in every respect. The study also discusses the impact of external linguistic families on the linguistic evolution of this area. The unmistakable imprint of Tibeto-Burman languages, the Iranian languages, the Indo-European family and the Indo-Aryan family testify to the fact that the northern areas of Pakistan serve as a bridge between South Asia, Central Asia, China, and Iran.

Calvin. R. Rensch is the Asia Area Director of the Summer Institute of Linguistic. He has done language research in Mexico and South Asia and has taught linguistics courses in both North America and Asia for SIL. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of Pennsylvania.