How many of the world's languages have been linguistically documented?
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moondog (
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November 13th, 2006
Current estimates put the number of living or recently extinct languages at around 7,000. My question is, how many of these languages have had some linguistic analysis or documentation made of them.
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3 Answers
a great question. I have read that over 1,000 of those languages are from New Guinea alone (the hotspot for linguistic diversity). I don't know how many have been linguistically analyzed, though. I recall a NYTimes article from earlier this year about trying to document dying languages before they go extinct.
the Ethnologue is the compendium of all the world's languages, originally compiled by Christian missionaries, documenting about 6,900 distinct languages (400 of which on the verge of extinction)...there's an aritcle about it here http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40C1FFB35540C7A8DDDAE0894DD404482
The question is in fact, not how many langauges exist in the world. There are plenty of resources to find that answer. The question is how many of those languages have been described linguistically, at least partially. Not just counted, but someone has written something about them e.g. described their sytax, sketched their sound system, or recorded a few traditional stories...merci.
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