> it seems to me there has always been two things in tension: forces which push for unification, and forces which push for diversification. Agreed. I'm also no

> it seems to me there has always been two things in tension: forces which push for unification, and forces which push for diversification. Agreed. I'm also not a linguist, but it does seem to me that the forces pushing for unification are more societal or statal, while those pushing for diversification are just kind of the natural state of things. Before large scale (somewhat) centralized societies emerged (so before the agricultural revolution) there are still many tens of thousands of years when language was completely non-standardized, strictly spoken and extremely diverse.