Language endangerment: Using analytical methods from conservation biology to illuminate loss of linguistic diversity

Bromham, Lindell

doi:10.1017/ext.2022.3

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…All things being equal, an area with more languages will also tend to have more endangered languages, particularly if areas of high language diversity support smaller speaker populations with smaller range sizes (Hua et al, 2019 ), since population size and area are associated with endangerment. When the spatial patterns of language endangerment and endangered species are taken into account, there is no significant association between the two (Bromham, 2023 ). Spatial autocorrelation may also underlie the reported correlation between language diversity and parasite diversity, which was interpreted as evidence that infection risk drives the divergence of cultures (Fincher & Thornhill, 2008 ).…”

Section: Congruent Spatial Patterns Of Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Neighbours and relatives: accounting for spatial distribution when testing causal hypotheses in cultural evolution

Bromham,

Yaxley

2023

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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Many important and interesting hypotheses about cultural evolution are evaluated using cross-cultural correlations: if knowing one particular feature of a culture (e.g. environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity or parasite load) allows you to predict other features (e.g. language features, religious beliefs, cuisine), it is often interpreted as indicating a causal link between the two (e.g. hotter climates carry greater disease risk, which encourages belief in supernatural forces and favours the use of antimicrobial ingredients in food preparation; dry climates make the production of distinct tones more difficult). However, testing such hypotheses from cross-cultural comparisons requires us to take proximity of cultures into account: nearby cultures share many aspects of their environment and are more likely to be similar in many culturally inherited traits. This can generate indirect associations between environment and culture which could be misinterpreted as signals of a direct causal link. Evaluating examples of cross-cultural correlations from the literature, we show that significant correlations interpreted as causal relationships can often be explained as a result of similarity between neighbouring cultures. We discuss some strategies for sorting the explanatory wheat from the co-varying chaff, distinguishing incidental correlations from causal relationships.

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Section: Congruent Spatial Patterns Of Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%