The index of linguistic diversity: A new quantitative measure of trends in the status of the world's languages

dc.contributor.authorHarmon, David
dc.contributor.authorLoh, Jonathan
dc.date.accessioned2010-09-15T00:44:08Z
dc.date.available2010-09-15T00:44:08Z
dc.date.issued2010-09
dc.description.abstractThe Index of Linguistic Diversity (ILD) is a new quantitative measure of trends in linguistic diversity. To derive the ILD we created a database of time-series data on language demographics, which we believe to be the world’s largest. So far, the database contains information from nine editions of Ethnologue and five other compendia of speaker numbers. The initial version of the ILD, which draws solely on the Ethnologue subset of these data, is based on a representative random sample of 1,500 of the world’s 7,299 languages (as listed in the 2005 edition). At the global level, the ILD measures how far, on average, the world’s languages deviate from a hypothetical situation of stability in which each language is neither increasing nor decreasing its share of the total population of the grouping. The ILD can also be used to assess trends at various subglobal groupings. Key findings: • Globally, linguistic diversity declined 20% over the period 1970–2005. • The diversity of the world’s indigenous languages declined 21%. • Regionally, indigenous linguistic diversity declined over 60% in the Americas, 30% in the Pacific (including Australia), and almost 20% in Africa.
dc.description.sponsorshipNational Foreign Language Resource Center
dc.format.extent55 pages
dc.identifier.citationHarmon, David and Jonathan Loh. 2010. The index of linguistic diversity: A new quantitative measure of trends in the status of the world's languages. Language Documentation & Conservation 4. 97-151.
dc.identifier.issn1934-5275
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10125/4474
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherUniversity of Hawai'i Press
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License
dc.rights.ccAttribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
dc.rights.cccodeby-nc-d-sa
dc.subjectlanguage trends
dc.subjectindices
dc.subjectlinguistic diversity
dc.subjectcultural diversity
dc.titleThe index of linguistic diversity: A new quantitative measure of trends in the status of the world's languages
dc.typeArticle
dc.type.dcmiText
prism.endingpage151
prism.publicationnameLanguage Documentation & Conservation
prism.startingpage97
prism.volume4

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