(Press-News.org) Physicists and mathematicians from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain are putting paid to the theory that two languages cannot co-exist in one society.
Analysing the pattern of populations speaking Castilian, the most common language spoken in Spain, and Galician, a language spoken in Galicia, the North West autonomous community of Spain, the researchers have used mathematical models to show that levels of bilingualism in a stable population can lead to the steady co-existence of two languages.
The research, published today, Thursday 3 March 2011, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), refutes earlier research which sought to show how one of two languages would inevitably die out.
Older models only took the number of each language's speakers and the relative status of each language into consideration, concluding that eventually the most dominant language would kill off the weaker; the decline of Welsh is often cited as an example of this.
Still with an interest in languages' relative status, the researchers used historical data to show how you can predict the continued existence of a language when you also incorporate a mathematical representation of the languages' similarity to one another, and the number of bilingual speakers, into the calculation.
If a significant fraction of the population is bilingual in two relatively similar languages, there appears to be no reason to believe that the more dominant language will inevitably kill off the weaker.
Researcher Jorge Mira Pérez said, "If the statuses of both languages were well balanced, a similarity of around 40% might be enough for the two languages to coexist.
If they were not balanced, a higher degree of similarity (above 75%, depending on the values of status) would be necessary for the weaker tongue to persist."
The researchers suggest their work could be used to inform political decisions concerning the protection of endangered languages, "Allowing for varying statuses and interlinguistic similarity could suggest further and more precise political guidelines for protecting endangered tongues, as well as illuminating the evolution of the language entities themselves."
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Following the introduction of video abstracts to the New Journal of Physics, you will be able to see a film about the research here, http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/videoabstracts.
The researchers' paper can be downloaded for free from Thursday 3 March 2011 here: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/13/3/033007/fulltext
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(March 2, 2011—Toronto, ON and Helsinki, Finland) Dr. Andras Nagy's laboratory at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and Dr. Timo Otonkoski's laboratory at Biomedicum Stem Cell Center (University of Helsinki), as well as collaborators in Europe and Canada have identified genetic abnormalities associated with reprogramming adult cells to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The findings give researchers new insights into the reprogramming process, and will help make future applications of stem cell creation and subsequent use safer.
The study ...
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In February, Matt Cutts of Google described on the company's blog what he called a "pretty big algorithmic improvement" ...
Ordinary human cells reprogrammed as induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) may ultimately revolutionize personalized medicine by creating new and diverse therapies unique to individual patients. But important and unanswered questions have persisted about the safety of these cells, in particular whether their genetic material is altered during the reprogramming process.
A new study – published in the March 3 issue of the journal Nature and led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego in collaboration with other leading stem cell research groups – finds ...
Boston, MA – A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers shows that adults who regularly take ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), have about one-third less risk of developing Parkinson's disease than non-users.
"There is no cure for Parkinson's disease, so the possibility that ibuprofen, an existing and relatively non-toxic drug, could help protect against the disease is captivating," said senior author Alberto Ascherio, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at HSPH.
The study will be published online March 2, 2011, in ...
Climate researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) expand a prevalent theory regarding the development of ice ages. In the current issue of the journal Nature three physicists from AWI's working group "Dynamics of the Palaeoclimate" present new calculations on the connection between natural insolation and long-term changes in global climate activity. Up to now the presumption was that temperature fluctuations in Antarctica, which have been reconstructed for the last million years on the basis of ice cores, ...
The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Newberry SC Hotel offers convenient lodging to guests attending the Irish Fling Celebration in downtown Newberry. The event will celebrate St. Patrick's Day and includes live entertainment at three locations. The annual Newberry Irish Fling will take place on March 18, 2011.
"The Newberry Irish Fling is a popular annual event our area residents and guests enjoy each year. As an added perk, there is no charge to attend Irish Fling," explains Ambria Lanteigne, General Manager at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Newberry. Lanteigne continues ...
Women who experience depression and anxiety after a miscarriage can continue to experience these symptoms even if they subsequently go on to have a healthy child.
The findings, based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) at the University of Bristol and published online today by the British Journal of Psychiatry, show no evidence that mental health problems associated with miscarriage or stillbirth end with the birth of a healthy baby. Instead, women may continue to experience symptoms for several years after the postnatal period.
The researchers ...
Pregnant women who are unaware that they have HIV miss the chance for drug treatment that can benefit not only their own health, but could also prevent them from transmitting the virus to their infants. When HIV is not diagnosed until women go into labor, their infants are usually treated soon after birth with the anti HIV drug zidovudine (ZDV), to prevent the infants from becoming infected with the virus.
Now, a National Institutes of Health study has found that adding one or two drugs to the standard ZDV treatment can reduce the chances by more than 50 percent that ...
Physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland-College Park, have for the first time caused a gas of atoms to exhibit an important quantum phenomenon known as spin-orbit coupling. Their technique opens new possibilities for studying and better understanding fundamental physics and has potential applications to quantum computing, next-generation "spintronics" devices and even "atomtronic" devices built from ultracold atoms.
In the researchers' demonstration of ...
Four new Brazilian species in the genus Ophiocordyceps have been published in the online journal PLoS ONE. The fungi, named by Dr. Harry Evans and Dr. David Hughes, belong to a group of "zombifying" fungi that infect ants and then manipulate their behavior, eventually killing the ants after securing a prime location for spore dispersal.
These results appear in a paper by Evans et al. entitled Hidden Diversity Behind the Zombie-Ant Fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis: Four New Species Described from Carpenter Ants in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This paper is the first to validly ...
