Revisiting scaling relations for linguistic diversity

M.R.F. Santos and M.A.F. Gomes

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 532, issue C

Abstract: The relations between linguistic diversity and geographic and ecological parameters have been studied over the last decades. Like biological species many languages are in risk of extinction. The effect of these extinctions must be felt in the loss of knowledge contained in such languages and their consequences on the economy could be noticed. Here a detailed statistical analysis shows that in addition to the recognized diversity of languages–area relation there is a remarkable scaling relation between the size of the economy of a country, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the number of languages spoken in its territory. In addition, it is shown that the cumulative distributions of linguistic diversity and GDP exhibit the same type of asymptotic behavior.

Keywords: Linguistic diversity; Economy; Scaling laws (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:532:y:2019:i:c:s0378437119310684

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.121821

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