[Lingtyp] Diversity/dispersion of descriptive/typological knowledge by language

[Kilu von Prince]

Hi Juergen,

Östen Dahl had a presentation about this a while ago. The slides are here:
https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/linguistics/conferences/2015-diversity-linguistics/Dahl_slides.pdf

Best,
Kilu

On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 7:09 PM Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77 at buffalo.edu> wrote:

> Dear all — I was wondering whether anybody has attempted to quantify the
> extent of linguistic diversity in our knowledge of the languages of the
> world. I believe mathematically speaking the type of information I’m
> looking for is a frequency distribution. The question is to what extent are
> a handful of languages and language families overrepresented in our
> knowledge of the languages of the world whereas the vast majority of
> languages and language families are underrepresented. One can ask this
> question (i) about our descriptive knowledge of any and all languages and
> (ii) specifically about the typological literature. I’m most interested in
> (ii), but I’m guessing there’s more likely to be an answer to (i) (though I
> also realize that the odds of anybody having proposed an answer to either
> question without me having heard of it are not great). Anybody aware of
> such a study? Even relevant claims without empirical footing would be of
> interest. — Best — Juergen
>
> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science
> University at Buffalo
>
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