Islands are engines of language diversity.
Journal
Nature ecology & evolution
ISSN: 2397-334X
Titre abrégé: Nat Ecol Evol
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101698577
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
05 Sep 2024
05 Sep 2024
Historique:
received:
11
03
2024
accepted:
01
07
2024
medline:
6
9
2024
pubmed:
6
9
2024
entrez:
5
9
2024
Statut:
aheadofprint
Résumé
Islands have played a prominent role in evolutionary and ecological theory, centring the theoretical framework for understanding biodiversity in terms of isolation and area and providing 'laboratories' of evolutionary change and adaptive radiation. However, a similar role for islands in understanding global language diversity has not been established, even though one-sixth of the world's languages are spoken on islands which account for <1% of the inhabited land area. The striking diversity of island languages remains largely unexplained. We construct a global database which reveals that 10% of the world's languages are endemic to islands (landmasses <11,000 km
Identifiants
pubmed: 39237760
doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02488-4
pii: 10.1038/s41559-024-02488-4
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Informations de copyright
© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
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