ARE THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES CONSOLIDATING? THE DYNAMICS AND DISTRIBUTION OF LANGUAGE POPULATIONS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Clingingsmith, David
• 署名单位: University System of Ohio; Case Western Reserve University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12257
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 143-176
• 关键词: endangered languages; LAW; size; bilingualism; cities; SYSTEM; MODEL

摘要

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.