Are the World’s Languages Consolidating? The Dynamics and Distribution of Language Populations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9720366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Clingingsmith (0000-0002-9928-284X, Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 127 |
| Issue | 599 |
| Pages | 143-176 |
| Publication date | 2017-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ecoj.12257 |
| OpenAlex | W2146603699 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 51 |
Scholars have conjectured that the return to speaking a language increases with the number of speakers. Long‐run economic and political integration would accentuate this advantage, increasing the population share of the largest languages. I show that, to the contrary, language size and growth are uncorrelated except for very small languages (< 35,000 speakers). I develop a model of local language coordination over a network. The steady‐state distribution of language sizes follows a power law and precisely fits the empirical size distribution of languages with ≥ 35,000 speakers. Simulations suggest the extinction of 40% of languages with < 35,000 speakers within 100 years
Distribution (mathematics · Dynamics (music · Extinction (optical mineralogy · Linguistics · Physics · Population · Sociology · Statistics · Uncorrelated · Computer Science · Demography · Language and cultural evolution · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics
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| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,8 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |