New Database Offers Insight Into Consequences of Language Loss
hubie writes:
A database of 2,467 languages helps researchers better understand the stakes when languages die off:
Languages, like animal species, can go extinct. More than half of the world's approximately 7,000 signed and spoken languages are currently endangered. And without intervention they are likely to become extinct, meaning nobody will speak or sign them any longer.
While language loss is happening across the world, the costs vary strikingly in different places, according to a new study co-authored by Yale linguist Claire Bowern. Regions where all Indigenous language are endangered - including parts of South America and the United States - face the greatest consequences.
The study, recently published in the journal Science Advances, is the first to use Grambank - the world's largest and most comprehensive database of language structure - to better understand global linguistic diversity and the threat that language loss poses to humanity's collective knowledge of history, culture, and cognition.
[...] The novel database currently covers 2,467 language varieties spanning 215 different language families and 101 isolated languages from all inhabited continents and geographic areas. It captures 195 language properties - including word order, verbal tense, and whether a language features gendered pronouns - allowing researchers to draw comparisons between and across the languages.
The current release version of the Grambank data can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7740139
Journal Reference:
Hedvig Skirgard et al., Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss, Sci. Adv., Vol 9, Issue 16, 2023. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6175
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