Investigation on the Relationship between Biodiversity and Linguistic Diversity in China and Its Formation Mechanism

Xuliang Zhang, Zhanting Bu, Hongrun Ju and Yibo Jing
Additional contact information
Xuliang Zhang: School of Tourism and Geography Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Zhanting Bu: School of Foreign Languages, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Hongrun Ju: School of Tourism and Geography Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Yibo Jing: School of Tourism and Geography Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 9, 1-19

Abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated that countries, biodiversity hotspots, wildness areas, and islands with high biodiversity also have high linguistic diversity, while the regional correlation between phonetic, lexical, and grammatical diversity within a particular kind of language and biodiversity has not been verified. Based on the methods of GIS visualization and Spearman correlation coefficient, the regional differences and correlations between linguistic diversity and biodiversity in China are investigated in this paper using the numbers of plant species, animal species, Chinese dialects, and the data of phonetic, lexical, and grammatical diversity of Chinese dialects. The results reveal the positive regional correlations between the diversity of Chinese dialects, as well as the phonetic, lexical, and grammatical diversity of Chinese dialects and biodiversity. In addition, the regional correlation between linguistic diversity and plant diversity is stronger than that between linguistic diversity and animal diversity. The diversity of Chinese dialects is being weakened by the industrialization and urbanization. Furthermore, some countermeasures to protect linguistic diversity are proposed, such as protecting biodiversity and small communities, as well as promoting national language resource protection projects.

Keywords: Chinese dialects; linguistic diversity; biodiversity; regional correlation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5538/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5538/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:9:p:5538-:d:807684

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().