The island biogeography of languages

Global Ecology and Biogeography Vol/Iss. 21(10) Blackwell Publishing Ltd Published In Pages: 958-967
By Gavin, Michael C. , Sibanda, Nokuthaba

Hypothesis

Language diversity among Pacific islands will be positively associated with large land area, low distance from closest continent, and duration of human settlement (959).

Note

Determined by fitness of models measured by Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Variables in other models include rainfall, absolute latitude, mean growing season, rainfall, number of ecoregions, continental dust fall, tephra, and island type. Land area on its own maintained a significant correlation to linguistic diversity (see other hypothesis).

Test

Test NameSupportSignificanceCoefficientTail
Multiple regressionSupportedp < 0.05R-squared = 0.56UNKNOWN