Mathematical model of language loss

[Susan Penfield]

Here is the link to the whole article...ISorry for any cross-posts...

http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1477&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286

-- 
  Moment of truth? Engineers devise model to predict when your language is
going to die . . .
 <http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/topicRss/1477.xml>    quote
<http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?dialogId=3429&ACTION=QUOTE_DIALOG&skinId=286>

   debaron at uiuc.edu


Edited Date: 15 Feb 2008
Edited By: debaron at uiuc.edu
 Two engineers from Cornell University's Department of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics have devised a mathematical model
<http://www.clipclip.org/Bevsiem/clips/detail/66166>to predict when the
language that you're speaking right now is going to die.

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.

[image: Probability formula tracking language death]

____________________________________________________________
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Department of English (Primary)
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)
Department of Language,Reading and Culture
Department of Linguistics
The Southwest Center (Research)
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836


"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

                                                         Wade Davis...(on a
Starbucks cup...)
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