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Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea

Environmental parameters constrain the distributions of plant and animal species. A key question is to what extent does environment influence human behavior. Decreasing linguistic diversity from the equator towards the poles suggests that ecological factors influence linguistic geography. However, a...

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Autores principales: Antunes, Nicolas, Schiefenhövel, Wulf, d’Errico, Francesco, Banks, William E., Vanhaeren, Marian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540881/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33027273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239359
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author Antunes, Nicolas
Schiefenhövel, Wulf
d’Errico, Francesco
Banks, William E.
Vanhaeren, Marian
author_facet Antunes, Nicolas
Schiefenhövel, Wulf
d’Errico, Francesco
Banks, William E.
Vanhaeren, Marian
author_sort Antunes, Nicolas
collection PubMed
description Environmental parameters constrain the distributions of plant and animal species. A key question is to what extent does environment influence human behavior. Decreasing linguistic diversity from the equator towards the poles suggests that ecological factors influence linguistic geography. However, attempts to quantify the role of environmental factors in shaping linguistic diversity remain inconclusive. To this end, we apply Ecological Niche Modelling methods to present-day language diversity in New Guinea. We define an Eco-Linguistic Niche (ELN) as the range of environmental conditions present in the territory of a population speaking a specific language or group of languages characterized by common language traits. In order to reconstruct the ELNs, we used Papuan and Austronesian language groups, transformed their geographical distributions into occurrence data, assembled available environmental data for New Guinea, and applied predictive architectures developed in the field of ecology to these data. We find no clear relationship between linguistic diversity and ELNs. This is particularly true when linguistic diversity is examined at the level of language groups. Language groups are variably dependent on environment and generally share their ELN with other language groups. This variability suggests that population dynamics, migration, linguistic drift, and socio-cultural mechanisms must be taken into consideration in order to better understand the myriad factors that shape language diversity.
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spelling pubmed-75408812020-10-19 Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea Antunes, Nicolas Schiefenhövel, Wulf d’Errico, Francesco Banks, William E. Vanhaeren, Marian PLoS One Research Article Environmental parameters constrain the distributions of plant and animal species. A key question is to what extent does environment influence human behavior. Decreasing linguistic diversity from the equator towards the poles suggests that ecological factors influence linguistic geography. However, attempts to quantify the role of environmental factors in shaping linguistic diversity remain inconclusive. To this end, we apply Ecological Niche Modelling methods to present-day language diversity in New Guinea. We define an Eco-Linguistic Niche (ELN) as the range of environmental conditions present in the territory of a population speaking a specific language or group of languages characterized by common language traits. In order to reconstruct the ELNs, we used Papuan and Austronesian language groups, transformed their geographical distributions into occurrence data, assembled available environmental data for New Guinea, and applied predictive architectures developed in the field of ecology to these data. We find no clear relationship between linguistic diversity and ELNs. This is particularly true when linguistic diversity is examined at the level of language groups. Language groups are variably dependent on environment and generally share their ELN with other language groups. This variability suggests that population dynamics, migration, linguistic drift, and socio-cultural mechanisms must be taken into consideration in order to better understand the myriad factors that shape language diversity. Public Library of Science 2020-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7540881/ /pubmed/33027273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239359 Text en © 2020 Antunes et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Antunes, Nicolas
Schiefenhövel, Wulf
d’Errico, Francesco
Banks, William E.
Vanhaeren, Marian
Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title_full Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title_fullStr Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title_full_unstemmed Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title_short Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea
title_sort quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in new guinea
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540881/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33027273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239359
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