Chapter 13 dealt with historical linguistics. History interests me a great deal, but I don't think I would be very patient in studying linguistics historically via the process the chapter described with the Polynesian languages. The case study was interesting. I enjoyed seeing how they used history, archeology and anthropology to surmise how the Polynesian languages developed and how they are related to one another as a language family.
The chapter also briefly described the language families of the world. English and many western European languages descended from the Indo-European family. The family language trees proved helpful in visualizing the evolution of each family. The chapter spent most of the time on the Indo-European because of the assumption that most readers of this text have a strong English background. The other language families of the world received less attention. Some language families are quite small and don't belong to a larger family; Japanese is such an isolate.
The last part of the chapter dealt with language changes brought on by contact between different languages. For example, bilingualism or multilingualism--both fairly self explanatory terms--can become nativization, when a community adopts a new language in addition to its native language such as English in India. Pidgin, a simplified version of a majority or dominant group's language adopted by a minority or subordinate group, can evolve into creole--a former pidgin that has acquired native speakers.
The key to the whole chapter again is the fact that language is always evolving and changing.
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