<div>Here is the link to the whole article...ISorry for any cross-posts...</div>
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<div><a href="http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1477&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286">http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1477&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286</a><br clear="all">
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<div class="edu-uiuc-webservices-blog-post-titlebar-title">Moment of truth? Engineers devise model to predict when your language is going to die . . .</div>
<div align="right"><a href="http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/topicRss/1477.xml" target="_new"><img src="https://webtools.uiuc.edu/tb_media/ows/images/xml.gif" border="0"></a> <a href="http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?dialogId=3429&ACTION=QUOTE_DIALOG&skinId=286"><font color="#f2f3df">quote </font></a> </div>
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<div><a href="mailto:debaron@uiuc.edu">debaron@uiuc.edu</a></div></td></tr>
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<div><br><br>Edited Date: 15 Feb 2008<br>Edited By: <a href="mailto:debaron@uiuc.edu">debaron@uiuc.edu</a></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td>
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<div class="edu-uiuc-webservices-blog-quote-response">Two engineers from Cornell University's Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics have devised <a title="ABC News link" href="http://www.clipclip.org/Bevsiem/clips/detail/66166"><font color="#414171">a mathematical model </font></a>to predict when the language that you're speaking right now is going to die. <br>
<br>After studying what's been happening to Gaelic and Welsh, which are succumbing to English, and Quechua, an indigenous language of South America that is being eroded by Spanish, Daniel Abrams and Steven Strogatz used probability theory and some graphs to prove that when languages compete, one of them will go extinct. The winner then moves on to the next round in the game of survival of the fittest language. <br>
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<div align="center"><img title="formula" height="73" alt="Probability formula tracking language death" src="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/wolimages/formula.gif" width="192" border="0"> </div></div>
</td></tr></tbody></table><br>____________________________________________________________<br>Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.<br><br>Department of English (Primary) <br>American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)<br>
Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)<br>Department of Language,Reading and Culture<br>Department of Linguistics<br>The Southwest Center (Research)<br>Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836<br><br><br>
"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities." <br> <br> Wade Davis...(on a Starbucks cup...)