Abstract: Half of the world’s languages are in danger of disappearing before the century ends. Efficient protection of these languages is difficult as their fate depends on multiple factors. The role played by the geographic situation of a language in its survival is still unclear. The following quantitative study focused on the relation between the ‘vitality’ of a minority language and the linguistic structure of the neighboring languages. A large sample of languages in Eurasia was considered. The languages were described based on a complex system of typological features. The spatial distribution of the language features in the sample area was measured by quantifying deviations from purely random configurations. Interactions between the linguistic features were revealed. The obtained interaction network permitted to define a location “quality” index for a language localization. This index was put in relation to corresponding vitality estimations from Unesco. A significant relation could be established between these two variables. The degree of endangerment of the minority languages studied seems effectively related to the linguistic structure of their neighboring languages. Beyond the particular context of endangered languages, the proposed approach constitutes a promising tool to gain more knowledge about the mechanisms that control the geographical distribution of linguistic features.

Keywords: Language competition, Complex systems, Interactions, Spatial distribution, Typological language features.

ACM Classification Keywords: I.m Miscellaneous; J.5 Arts and Humanities – Linguistics; H.2.8 Database Applications – Data mining, Scientific databases, Spatial databases and GIS.

Link:

ANALYZING THE LOCALIZATION OF LANGUAGE FEATURES WITH COMPLEX SYSTEMS TOOLS AND PREDICTING LANGUAGE VITALITY

Samuel F. Omlin

http://www.foibg.com/ijitk/ijitk-vol04/ijitk04-3-p04.pdf