December Days 11
Dec. 11th, 2018 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistThe thing that was most interesting to learn this [UNIT OF TIME], suggested by silveradept
We had our last proper typology lecture yesterday (the one I'll go to after I've written this is exam preparation) and it made me wonder if typology isn't going to be this semester's "thing I'm going to hate taking but be glad I've taken," like Sounds of Language was last spring.
After a rather dry semester I found yesterday's quo-vadis lecture really fascinating: it was about the new areas of study typology is heading towards (according to my lecturer anyway and to her credit she always admits to her biases).
They include overlaps with evolutionary biology, which is surprisingly relevant to linguistics in terms of methods (apparently some of the same statistical models can be used) and what they're trying to find out (the origin and development of diversity, be it in languages or biology).
Some odd correlations have already been found. Like, places with more biodiversity tend also to have more languages spoken there. Mammal diversity has been proposed as having a particular effect. Altitude correlates with linguistic diversity. As does living in a forested area. Even the prevalence of infectious diseases seems to be related to how many languages are likely to be spoken in a place.
Now as I said these are correlations, and none of them might end up being causation. There are masses of biological data in these statistical models these days and it might just be throwing false positives up. There are theories about why some of these correlations might exist though, so I don't know.
These correlations are definitely the best thing I learned yesterday, and maybe for quite some while! I know nothing about biology but it's always nice to see interdisciplinary results, and fun to think about other things after being stuck in linguistics mode so much lately.
silveradeptWe had our last proper typology lecture yesterday (the one I'll go to after I've written this is exam preparation) and it made me wonder if typology isn't going to be this semester's "thing I'm going to hate taking but be glad I've taken," like Sounds of Language was last spring.
After a rather dry semester I found yesterday's quo-vadis lecture really fascinating: it was about the new areas of study typology is heading towards (according to my lecturer anyway and to her credit she always admits to her biases).
They include overlaps with evolutionary biology, which is surprisingly relevant to linguistics in terms of methods (apparently some of the same statistical models can be used) and what they're trying to find out (the origin and development of diversity, be it in languages or biology).
Some odd correlations have already been found. Like, places with more biodiversity tend also to have more languages spoken there. Mammal diversity has been proposed as having a particular effect. Altitude correlates with linguistic diversity. As does living in a forested area. Even the prevalence of infectious diseases seems to be related to how many languages are likely to be spoken in a place.
Now as I said these are correlations, and none of them might end up being causation. There are masses of biological data in these statistical models these days and it might just be throwing false positives up. There are theories about why some of these correlations might exist though, so I don't know.
These correlations are definitely the best thing I learned yesterday, and maybe for quite some while! I know nothing about biology but it's always nice to see interdisciplinary results, and fun to think about other things after being stuck in linguistics mode so much lately.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-11 03:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-11 07:40 pm (UTC)