Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world's languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world's most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

CAMINHOS DE SOPRO: DISCURSO XAMÂNICO E PERCURSOS FLORESTAIS DOS HUPD’ÄH

Resumo Vagarosamente, as pegadas dos viajantes Hupd’äh deixam a aldeia e seguem pelos caminhos de mata. Tateiam o solo úmido da floresta amazônica pisando e repisando percursos ancestrais. Devidamente protegidos pela ação xamânica dos anciões, os jovens caminhantes seguem seus mentores, observam plantas, paisagens, rastros e ouvem encantamentos xamânicos. Partindo da análise comparativa entre, de um lado, viagens para lugares sagrados (morros e cavernas) e, de outro, a viagem do xamã no “benzimento dos caminhos” para proteger os viajantes, busca-se evidenciar as relações entre a palavra xamânica, os caminhos vividos e os modos de mobilidade hup. Descrevendo em paralelo os aspectos de mobilidade das exegeses de encantamentos e os elementos xamânicos revelados pelas paisagens florestais, o artigo pretende mostrar a importância dos caminhos e dos lugares sagrados Hupd’äh para o chamado sistema multiétnico de geografias xamânicas do Alto Rio Negro. Em que medida, através da mobilidade dos xamãs pelas palavras e da mobilidade dos viajantes por seus passos, os Hupd’äh, povo do Alto Rio Negro-AM, descrevem seus percursos de observação e ação ao longo do mundo?

The Paleobiolinguistics of the Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)

Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) developed significance for prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which common bean terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in the common bean became significant primarily with the widespread development of a village‐farming way of life in the New World rather than earlier when squash and maize and a few other crops became important.

The Paleobiolinguistics of Maize (Zea mays L.)

Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where maize (Zea mays) developed significance for different prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which maize terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in maize was extensive millennia before the widespread development of a village‐farming way of life in the New World.

The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Chili Pepper (Capsicum spp.)

Paleobiolinguistics employs the comparative method of historical linguistics to reconstruct the biodiversity known to human groups of the remote, unrecorded past. Comparison of words for biological species from languages of the same language family facilitates reconstruction of the biological vocabulary of the family’s ancient proto-language. This study uses paleobiolinguistics to establish where and when chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) developed significance for different prehistoric Native American groups. This entails mapping in both time and geographic space proto-languages for which words for chili pepper reconstruct. Maps show the broad distribution of Capsicum through Mesoamerica and South America mirroring its likely independent domestication in these regions. Proto-language dates indicate that human interest in chili pepper had developed in most of Latin America at least a millennium before a village-farming way of life became widespread.

The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Manioc (Manihot esculenta)

Paleobiolinguistics is used to identify on maps where and when manioc (Manihot esculenta) developed importance for different prehistoric groups of Native Americans. This information indicates, among other things, that significant interest in manioc developed at least a millennium before a village-farming way of life became widespread in the New World.

Does lateral transmission obscure inheritance in hunter-gatherer languages?

In recent years, linguists have begun to increasingly rely on quantitative phylogenetic approaches to examine language evolution. Some linguists have questioned the suitability of phylogenetic approaches on the grounds that linguistic evolution is largely reticulate due to extensive lateral transmission, or borrowing, among languages. The problem may be particularly pronounced in hunter-gatherer languages, where the conventional wisdom among many linguists is that lexical borrowing rates are so high that tree building approaches cannot provide meaningful insights into evolutionary processes. However, this claim has never been systematically evaluated, in large part because suitable data were unavailable. In addition, little is known about the subsistence, demographic, ecological, and social factors that might mediate variation in rates of borrowing among languages. Here, we evaluate these claims with a large sample of hunter-gatherer languages from three regions around the world. In this study, a list of 204 basic vocabulary items was collected for 122 hunter-gatherer and small-scale cultivator languages from three ecologically diverse case study areas: northern Australia, northwest Amazonia, and California and the Great Basin. Words were rigorously coded for etymological (inheritance) status, and loan rates were calculated. Loan rate variability was examined with respect to language area, subsistence mode, and population size, density, and mobility; these results were then compared to the sample of 41 primarily agriculturalist languages. Though loan levels varied both within and among regions, they were generally low in all regions (mean 5.06%, median 2.49%, and SD 7.56), despite substantial demographic, ecological, and social variation. Amazonian levels were uniformly very low, with no language exhibiting more than 4%. Rates were low but more variable in the other two study regions, in part because of several outlier languages where rates of borrowing were especially high. High mobility, prestige asymmetries, and language shift may contribute to the high rates in these outliers. No support was found for claims that hunter-gatherer languages borrow more than agriculturalist languages. These results debunk the myth of high borrowing in hunter-gatherer languages and suggest that the evolution of these languages is governed by the same type of rules as those operating in large-scale agriculturalist speech communities. The results also show that local factors are likely to be more critical than general processes in determining high (or low) loan rates.

Direct effect of cortisol and cortisone on insulin and glucagon secretion

The direct effects of cortisol and cortisone on insulin and glucagon secretion by the isolated perfused rat pancreas were examined. Cortisone, but not cortisol, in a final concentration of 10(-4) M acutely and strongly inhibited both phases of glucose- and arginine-induced insulin secretion. In repeated pulse administrations, the second infusion of cortisone elicited an inhibition of insulin release equal to the first response. Glucagon output was slightly suppressed by cortisol and more significantly by cortisone in a glucose-free medium. The blockade of alpha-adrenergic receptors by phentolamine attenuated, but did not prevent, the strong inhibitory action of cortisone on insulin secretion.

Childhood bereavement and subsequent crime

It has long been recognized that deprivation in childhood could be related to subsequent crime. Bunyan, in The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, takes for granted that orphanhood renders a girl liable to early seduction. Dickens, writing of Newgate Prison in his Sketches by Boz, says: “Barely past her childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who had never known what childhood is; who have never been taught to love and court a parent's smile, or to dread a parent's frown. The thousand nameless endearments of childhood, its gaiety and its innocence, are alike unknown to them. They have entered at once into the stern realities and miseries of life, and to their better nature it is almost impossible to appeal in after times ….” In 1944, Bowlby outlined the concept of the affectless and affectionless psychopath produced by deprivation and repeated change of parent figure. The Gluecks, in 1950, found an increase of incidence of broken family in young male delinquents. Analysis of their figures (Fig. 1) suggests that loss of mothers in the childhood of these male delinquents was significant. In 1961 we made an examination of 200 women prisoners and concluded that loss of fathers in childhood was a significant factor in female delinquents.