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--></style></head><body lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Hi all,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I’m a political scientist who has been working on language policy issues for eons. The article announced below is by a quite well known political scientist (unlike me!). The authors seem, at least to me, to have a pretty poor understanding of (socio)linguistics. So I’m curious to hear linguists’ and sociolinguists’ assessment, to see if my critique holds.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">The main problem I have with this article is that it claims that ADOL (average distance of language), the independent variable in this study, has a causal effect on human development outcomes (e.g., ranking on the human development index). The use of “language distance” as an independent variable has become quite popular recently among political scientists and economists looking at language policy issues. The authors of the article below draw on Greenberg’s 1956 article in <i>Language</i> as the sole linguistic source of the notion of “language distance” (measured by authors in article below as number of nodes on linguistic genealogy/language family trees). Most of my focus on language policy issues has been on South Asia; in the same exact issue of Greenberg’s article was an article by Emeneau titled “India as a Linguistic Area,” which suggests that the linguistic commonalities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages in India through language contact over the millennia renders “language distance” meaningless in many ways. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">So what I’d like to know is whether contemporary linguists and sociolinguists would adhere more to Greenberg or Emeneau. I’d like to debunk the claim of the article below that the “relationship between ADOL and socioeconomic development is indeed causal”. I think that the way to do this is to debunk the article’s premise that the learning costs of learning a language that is “distant” from one’s native language are higher than learning “a language proximate in structure”. In my understanding of linguistics, having a genealogically distant language isn’t necessarily the same as having a language that is not proximate in structure. Even if it were, it would seem that there may be different learning costs according to whether the differences in “structure” were phonological, syntactical, morphological, and/or semantic.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Of course all of this is independent of another major sociolinguistic misperception of (particularly American) political scientists: they tend to assume that individuals the world over are monolingual and have a clearly identifiable “native” language or “mother tongue”.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">So if any of you could help me out, I’d appreciate it! This may indeed be of interest to the whole list, or if you would like to reply to me directly that would also be great.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Thanks so much!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Sam Sonntag</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">E-mail: <a href="mailto:Selma.Sonntag@humboldt.edu">Selma.Sonntag@humboldt.edu</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> lgpolicy-list-bounces+selma.sonntag=<a href="mailto:humboldt.edu@groups.sas.upenn.edu">humboldt.edu@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:lgpolicy-list-bounces%2Bselma.sonntag">lgpolicy-list-bounces+selma.sonntag</a>=<a href="mailto:humboldt.edu@groups.sas.upenn.edu">humboldt.edu@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Harold Schiffman<br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, December 14, 2016 10:20 AM<br><b>To:</b> lp <<a href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> [lg policy] Language Policy and Human Development</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><div><h1>Language Policy and Human Development</h1><p class="entry-meta">December 13, 2016 By <span class="entry-author"><a href="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/author/webapsanet-org/"><span class="entry-author-name">APSA</span></a></span> <span class="entry-comments-link"><a href="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/language-policy-and-human-development/#respond">Leave a Comment</a></span> </p><h3><img border="0" width="180" height="240" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.politicalsciencenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/american_political-science-review.jpg?resize=180%2C240" alt="american_political-science-review">Language Policy and Human Development</h3><p>David D. Laitin, Stanford University<br>Rajesh Ramachandran, Goethe University Frankfurt</p><p>This article explores how language policy affects the socioeconomic development of nation states through two channels: the individual’s exposure to and (in reference to an individual’s mother tongue) linguistic distance from the official language. In a cross-country framework the article first establishes a robust and sizeable negative relationship between an official language that is distant from the local indigenous languages and proxies for human capital and health. To establish this relationship as causal, we instrument language choice with a measure of geographic distance from the origins of writing. Next, using individual level data from India and a set of 11 African countries, we provide microempirical support on the two channels—distance from and exposure to the official language—and their implications for educational, health, occupational and wealth outcomes. Finally, we suggest policy implications based on our findings. <strong><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/language-policy-and-human-development/F0464F77F597CA8FA466758650718018">Read more.</a></strong></p><p><a href="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/language-policy-and-human-development/">http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/language-policy-and-human-development/</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br>-- </p><div><p class="MsoNormal">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</p></div></div></div></body></html>