Ethnicity is a carrier of language and culture.Spatial distribution of ethnic diversity is fundamental for identifying and reconstructing the migration patterns and evolution histories of cultures and languages.Utiliz...Ethnicity is a carrier of language and culture.Spatial distribution of ethnic diversity is fundamental for identifying and reconstructing the migration patterns and evolution histories of cultures and languages.Utilizing the Chinese 4th National Census (1990) data,we investigated the specific time geographical patterns of population and diversity of Chinese ethnicminorities.As anticipated,results show that Chineseminorities are chiefly concentrated in dis-tant plateaus and mountains in the southwest,northwest and northeast of China.Further,population density centers of the 10 majorminorities are rather scattered,alternatively dominating at different parts of the country.This study pro-vides a first comprehensive quantitative test on a prevailing notion of 'six plates and three corridors' on the empirical clustering patterns of Chinese ethnicminorities.There are more consistent evidences supporting this notion in the north of China,with the central and southern regions showing more complex patterns,potentially transformed by processes such as migration,fragmentation,and percolation.The results of this study suggest that a geographical ap-proach can provide heuristic and complementary information for better understanding of historical social processes.展开更多
A fundamental difference among modern languages in the world are made by word-syllable structures(WSS), not by distinctive phonemes. Language diversity is supposed to be an evolutionary result of the WSSs, which is de...A fundamental difference among modern languages in the world are made by word-syllable structures(WSS), not by distinctive phonemes. Language diversity is supposed to be an evolutionary result of the WSSs, which is decided by types of syllable constitution and the length of word by syllables. Here we use Swadesh lists of 179 modern languages to analyze their geographic distribution of WSS diversity index and try to discover their developing positions and depths in the evolutionary processes. We also set an ideal WSS offset model for languages, calculate the offset distance and offset direction of each language, and then divide languages into three groups according to the data result, each of which represents an evolutionary type. Our conclusion is that the WSS diversity and the WSS offset model represent the evolutionary trend of diversity and the evolutionary process of human languages in the world. In addition, every language nowadays keeps the most primary WSS features to some extent. Therefore, the WSS may be regarded as genetic factors of human languages.展开更多
基金Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30870432)
文摘Ethnicity is a carrier of language and culture.Spatial distribution of ethnic diversity is fundamental for identifying and reconstructing the migration patterns and evolution histories of cultures and languages.Utilizing the Chinese 4th National Census (1990) data,we investigated the specific time geographical patterns of population and diversity of Chinese ethnicminorities.As anticipated,results show that Chineseminorities are chiefly concentrated in dis-tant plateaus and mountains in the southwest,northwest and northeast of China.Further,population density centers of the 10 majorminorities are rather scattered,alternatively dominating at different parts of the country.This study pro-vides a first comprehensive quantitative test on a prevailing notion of 'six plates and three corridors' on the empirical clustering patterns of Chinese ethnicminorities.There are more consistent evidences supporting this notion in the north of China,with the central and southern regions showing more complex patterns,potentially transformed by processes such as migration,fragmentation,and percolation.The results of this study suggest that a geographical ap-proach can provide heuristic and complementary information for better understanding of historical social processes.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Fundation of China (31271337)the National Social Science Foundation of China (12&ZD174)
文摘A fundamental difference among modern languages in the world are made by word-syllable structures(WSS), not by distinctive phonemes. Language diversity is supposed to be an evolutionary result of the WSSs, which is decided by types of syllable constitution and the length of word by syllables. Here we use Swadesh lists of 179 modern languages to analyze their geographic distribution of WSS diversity index and try to discover their developing positions and depths in the evolutionary processes. We also set an ideal WSS offset model for languages, calculate the offset distance and offset direction of each language, and then divide languages into three groups according to the data result, each of which represents an evolutionary type. Our conclusion is that the WSS diversity and the WSS offset model represent the evolutionary trend of diversity and the evolutionary process of human languages in the world. In addition, every language nowadays keeps the most primary WSS features to some extent. Therefore, the WSS may be regarded as genetic factors of human languages.
