![]() increased exposure to broadcast media and the internet), globalisation (e.g. Grenoble identifies four broad categories of factors responsible for language loss: urbanisation (e.g. Many factors have been shown to cause a loss of language and TEK, with significant overlap between the two. In contrast, environmental degradation brought about by deforestation and mining, and exacerbated by an influx of weeds and feral animals, was held partly responsible for TEK and cultural erosion in several language communities of Cape York in northern Australia. McCarter and Gavin also reported a perceived loss of TEK in three villages in Vanuatu, but neither language shift nor ecological change were blamed by the respondents. ![]() Cristancho and Vining investigated perceptions of TEK loss in younger generations in two villages in Colombia and Guatemala, and found a high level of attrition in both, partly attributed to language shift (but they note that there were similar levels of environmental richness at both sites, and differing levels of language shift). Following are some illustrative examples. Indeed, real-world empirical studies indicate that these phenomena can interact in complex ways, and that it is as yet difficult to make robust cross-cultural and cross-regional generalisations about correlations among the phenomena. This strongly suggests that the exact linkages and causal mechanisms (if any) between the endangerment of language, knowledge and biocultural diversity are still unclear, and need to be elucidated by further research. Both statements are by themselves unproblematic, but taken together, imply conflicting attitudes towards causality. 105), but also state elsewhere in the same paper that ‘diverse languages and knowledge bases are threatened today by the dual erosion of biological and cultural diversity’ (p. , list ‘language erosion and loss’ as a threat to both biological and cultural diversity (p. This is probably due to a lack of sufficient empirical data from local-scale studies from around the world, an urgent need that has been recognised for some time. However, the precise nature of the links between these phenomena are often not clearly articulated, but only indirectly implied. The importance of language in maintaining TEK is recognised by linguists and ethnobiologists alike, and there is a general consensus that both need to be kept at healthy levels for biocultural diversity to flourish. Since the language spoken by a community is inextricably linked with its culture, and since language forms a unique repository of a community’s traditional knowledge, it is not surprising that calls for safeguarding the continued transmission of small, endangered languages have gained momentum in recent decades, with the aim of halting the decline in biocultural diversity worldwide. It has also been noted that the endangerment of one form of diversity is usually accompanied by endangerment of the other, making it possible to enumerate common threats to both biological and cultural richness. Much has been written in the ethnobiological literature about the interrelatedness of biological and cultural (including linguistic) diversity one of the key findings of this endeavour is that geographical areas of high biological diversity and high cultural diversity happen to coincide globally (reviewed in ). The loss of a community’s traditional ecological knowledge (TEK a community’s knowledge of local plants, animals and ecological relationships) is particularly worrying, not just for the communities concerned, but also for documentary linguists and conservation biologists who strive for the preservation of endangered languages and biological species respectively. The endangerment of small, non-literary languages around the world, along with their unique knowledge systems, is a source of great concern. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ![]() ![]() The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. ![]() Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. ![]()
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