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Language endangerment and the human value of linguistic diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Ken Hale
Ken Hale*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

Linguists typically celebrate the tension that plays between two realities of human linguistic knowledge, universality and diversity. But linguistic diversity is not something whose future can be taken for granted. Many local languages and cultures find themselves in great peril in this era, a fact well documented elsewhere in this collection.

In the following paragraphs I will be concerned with the idea that linguistic diversity is important to human intellectual life—not only in the context of scientific linguistic inquiry, but also in relation to the class of human activities belonging to the realms of culture and art.

Information

Type
Endangered Languages
Information
Language , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1992, pp. 35 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Linguistic Society of America

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