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The relative abundance of languages: Neutral and non-neutral dynamics
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 12, p e0259162 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Credible estimates suggest that a large number of the nearly 7000 languages in the world could go extinct this century, a prospect with profound cultural, socioeconomic, and political ramifications. Despite its importance, we still have little predictive theory for language dynamics and richness. Critical to the language extinction problem, however, is to understand the dynamics of the number of speakers of languages, the dynamics of language abundance distributions (LADs). Many regional LADs are very similar to the bell-shaped distributions of relative species abundance predicted by neutral theory in ecology. Using the tenets of neutral theory, here we show that LADs can be understood as an equilibrium or disequilibrium between stochastic rates of origination and extinction of languages. However, neutral theory does not fit some regional LADs, which can be explained if the number of speakers has grown systematically faster in some languages than others, due to cultural factors and other non-neutral processes. Only the LADs of Australia and the United States, deviate from a bell-shaped pattern. These deviations are due to the documented higher, non-equilibrium extinction rates of low-abundance languages in these countries.
- Subjects :
- Evolutionary Processes
Conservation Biology
Ecological Metrics
Science
Social Sciences
Ecological Risk
Geographical Locations
Relative Abundance Distribution
Genetics
Species Extinction
Conservation Science
Language
Evolutionary Biology
Likelihood Functions
Multidisciplinary
Geography
Ecology
Population Biology
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Australia
Biology and Life Sciences
Linguistics
Probability Theory
United States
Biogeography
Community Ecology
Physical Sciences
Neutral Theory
People and Places
Africa
Languages
Earth Sciences
Medicine
Mathematics
Population Genetics
Research Article
Statistical Distributions
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 12
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....72f5903f41fb82f19638277b8522a0d5