Minding the Gaps

Problematic Use of Greenberg's Linguistic Classification of the Americas in Studies of Native American Genetic Variation

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderWorld Beat1 Nov 2007An Introduction Kirstin Chiasson Kirstin Chiasson Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.WB2.12162007.14 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Internationally coordinated research efforts—enhanced by fast, accessible, affordable electronic communication—are increasingly becoming part of mainstream science. Historically, international collaborations have been born of necessity—for example, to identify linguistic universals and linguistic diversity. Early studies of comparative linguistics epitomize global efforts. Systematic language comparisons have provided the framework for contemporary theories of the innate cognitive architecture underlying human language functions. Among the many challenges facing the discipline, the critical need to advance practice-based research stands out. The potential to advance clinical knowledge through international collaboration is extraordinary. Fortunately, we have a philosophically and empirically dense literature and abundant curiosity to support this expansion and enrichment of our clinical research base. This is the first of a two-part series in The ASHA Leader examining international research in speech, language, and hearing, with particular emphasis on its anticipated benefits to clinical service delivery. In Part 1, Elena Plante explores the training benefits for student researchers and clinicians participating in international research, and Lawrence Leonard offers guidance on how to establish and maintain a collaboration with international colleagues. In Part 2 (which will appear in the next issue), Kristen Zajdo addresses the challenges to developing a research agenda in an international community, and Ted Glattke explores a particularly difficult challenge—the protection of human subjects—an area in which moral absolutes need to withstand cultural, societal, governmental, and attitudinal variations. We have much to share and learn as part of the international community. When clinicians work globally, the translation of research into practice is complicated by cultural and linguistic variation. For example, audiologists use phonetically balanced word lists to derive a word discrimination score. Word lists (such as NU6, CID W22, and PBK50) were created to include words with a high frequency of use and a phonetic balance based upon distributions within Standard American English. A simple translation to non-English languages—to Russian, Spanish, or Japanese, for example—would neglect to adjust for the phonetic balance and word frequency distributions of these non-English languages. Thus, since a simple translation would not create a suitable word list, care needs to be taken to create language-appropriate word discrimination stimuli for use with non-English-speaking people. Similarly, speech-language pathologists are often asked to provide services to individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Unfortunately, because very few assessment instruments have been developed for use with such individuals, it is often challenging to confidently distinguish the effects of language impairment from linguistic and cultural variation. These challenges highlight the need for research that accounts for cultural and linguistic variation in measures of normative behaviors, estimates of diagnostic accuracy, and investigations of therapeutic efficacy. The new frontier for international research related to communication sciences and disorders will be in addressing prevention, assessment, and intervention practices across cultures and languages, as well as in understanding how societal attitudes and governmental policies affect the well-being of individuals living with communication impairments. Author Notes Kirstin Chiasson, is an audiologist for the Interior Health Ministry of British Columbia (Kelowna) and adjunct professor at Oregon Institute of Technology (Klamath Falls). Her research focuses on pediatric audiology and evoked potentials across the age span. Contact her at [email protected]. Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 12Issue 16November 2007 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Nov 1, 2007 Metrics Downloaded 72 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2007 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Similar to other languages such as English, Spanish and Arabic, Chinese is used by a large number of speakers in distinct speech communities which, despite sharing the unity of language, vary in interesting ways, and a systematic study of such linguistic variation is invaluable to appreciate the diversity and richness of the underlying cultures. This paper describes Project LIVAC (Linguistic Variation in Chinese Communities), which focuses on the development of a Chinese corpus, based on data taken concurrently at regular intervals from multiple Chinese speech communities. The resulting database and computerized concordance from the approximately 20 million word corpus with uniform time reference points extending across two years enable linguists and social scientists to undertake meaningful qualitative and quantitative comparative analysis of the development of linguistic and cultural variation. To facilitate these studies, a framework for integrating the corpus with specific corpus analysis applications is proposed. Based on this framework, a prototype retrieval system, which supports longitudinal studies on word and concept distribution, as well as lexical and other linguistic variation, is designed and implemented.

This article discusses the problems related to the treatment of linguistic variation in the classroom, compared to a traditional pedagogy that also sees the standard as a reference standard only legitimate language education at the expense of linguistic diversity, taken, in this case, as the parameter of social stigmatization. Therefore aims to disseminate current trends of language education that excels in ensuring the citizens of instruments for social action, through the competent use of language in various situations sociocomunicativas, including those that require the degree of formality. To this end, talks are about theories that the correlation between linguistic and sociocultural phenomena, pointing to factors that emphasize the linguistic and cultural diversity in the Amazon region, particularly in the state of Rondonia, and the implications of these peculiarities in teaching language. It is emphasized, then, the importance of school and teachers to recognize linguistic variations in the raw material for systematic work with the mother tongue, from the identification and description of events, making explicit the social consequences of each choice among various options offered by the language. From this perspective, are related examples of practical activities and proposals that explore the linguistic and cultural variations in classroom.

Science Education and Student Diversity: Synthesis and Research Agenda – By Okhee Lee and Aurolyn Luykx

An enormous amount of biological and cultural variability is present in prehistoric and contemporary populations in the Indian subcontinent, making it an important region to study population history. Various attempts have been made to describe and explain population diversity (e.g., Guha, 1935; Sarkar, 1954; Majumdar, 1961; Singh and Manoharan, 1993). Over the last five decades scholars from diverse disciplines, including social and biological anthropology, archaeology, and molecular biology have attempted to explain the patterns of population movements in the subcontinent. These studies aimed to identify the origins of populations in the region, evaluate chronological patterns in cultural behavior of past populations, and trace the origins of cultural diversity between contemporary groups. Some researchers attempted to correlate the phenotypic and genetic diversity of a group with its cultural and linguistic histories (Karve and Dandekar, 1951; Barnabas et al., 1996; Majumdar, 1998; Roychoudhury et al., 2001). According to studies dealing with linguistic diversity, there are around 325 spoken languages in India, which are divided into four ‘language families’, i.e., Austric (Austrasiatic), Dravidian, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan (Pattanayak, 1998). It is assumed that the speakers of the four language families represent at least four lineages. The problem of major concern among linguists is whether these language families developed within the region, or were introduced with migrations of people from outside the subcontinent. The geographical range of distribution of Austric, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan speakers is extensive, while languages of Dravidian family are restricted largely to India. Therefore it is argued that Dravidian languages might have developed within India while migrating populations brought other languages to India.

Patient reporting of the severity and impact of symptoms is an essential component of cancer symptom management and cancer treatment clinical trials. In multinational clinical trials, cultural and linguistic variations in patient-reported outcomes instruments could confound the interpretation of study results. The severity and interference of multiple symptoms in 1433 cancer patients with mixed diagnoses and treatment status from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and Korea were measured with psychometrically validated language versions of the M. D. Anderson Symptom Inventory (MDASI). Mixed-effect ordinal probit regression models were fitted to the pooled data to compare the magnitude of the effect of "country" (nation and linguistic factors) with between-subjects effects on symptom reporting, adjusted for patient and clinical factors (age, sex, performance status, and chemotherapy status). For the pooled sample, fatigue, disturbed sleep, distress, pain, and lack of appetite were the most severe patient-reported MDASI symptoms. The magnitude of the variance of the country random effects was only one-fourth to one-half of the interpatient variation (sigma(2) = 0.23-0.46) for all symptoms, except nausea and vomiting. Cultural and linguistic variations in symptom reporting among the five language versions of the validated MDASI were limited. Ordinal probit modeling provided a simple mechanism for accounting for cultural and linguistic differences in patient populations. The equivalence among MDASI translations in this study suggests that symptom ratings collected from various cultural and language groups using the MDASI can be interpreted in a similar way in oncology practice, clinical trials, and clinical research.

Observations of comorbidity in heart diseases, including cardiac dysfunction (CD) are increasing, including and cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (AD/D). This comorbidity might be due to a pleiotropic effect of genetic variants shared between CD and AD/D. Here, we validated comorbidity of CD and AD/D based on diagnostic records from millions of patients in Korea and the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (odds ratio 11.5 [8.5–15.5, 95% Confidence Interval (CI)]). By integrating a comprehensive human disease–SNP association database (VARIMED, VARiants Informing MEDicine) and whole-exome sequencing of 50 brains from individuals with and without Alzheimer's disease (AD), we identified missense variants in coding regions including APOB, a known risk factor for CD and AD/D, which potentially have a pleiotropic role in both diseases. Of the identified variants, site-directed mutation of ADIPOQ (268 G > A; Gly90Ser) in neurons produced abnormal aggregation of tau proteins (p = 0.02), suggesting a functional impact for AD/D. The association of CD and ADIPOQ variants was confirmed based on domain deletion in cardiac cells. Using the UK Biobank including data from over 500000 individuals, we examined a pleiotropic effect of the ADIPOQ variant by comparing CD- and AD/D-associated phenotypic evidence, including cardiac hypertrophy and cognitive degeneration. These results indicate that convergence of health care records and genetic evidences may help to dissect the molecular underpinnings of heart disease and associated cognitive impairment, and could potentially serve a prognostic function. Validation of disease–disease associations through health care records and genomic evidence can determine whether health conditions share risk factors based on pleiotropy.

ABSTRACTObjectives: The notion that patterns of linguistic and biological variation may cast light on each other and on population histories dates back to Darwin's times; yet, turning this intuition into a proper research program has met with serious methodological difficulties, especially affecting language comparisons. This article takes advantage of two new tools of comparative linguistics: a refined list of Indo‐European cognate words, and a novel method of language comparison estimating linguistic diversity from a universal inventory of grammatical polymorphisms, and hence enabling comparison even across different families. We corroborated the method and used it to compare patterns of linguistic and genomic variation in Europe. Materials and Methods: Two sets of linguistic distances, lexical and syntactic, were inferred from these data and compared with measures of geographic and genomic distance through a series of matrix correlation tests. Linguistic and genomic trees were also estimated and compared. A method (Treemix) was used to infer migration episodes after the main population splits. Results: We observed significant correlations between genomic and linguistic diversity, the latter inferred from data on both Indo‐European and non‐Indo‐European languages. Contrary to previous observations, on the European scale, language proved a better predictor of genomic differences than geography. Inferred episodes of genetic admixture following the main population splits found convincing correlates also in the linguistic realm. Discussion: These results pave the ground for previously unfeasible cross‐disciplinary analyses at the worldwide scale, encompassing populations of distant language families. Am J Phys Anthropol 157:630–640, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The history of people's movements and interactions shapes both genetic and linguistic variation. Genes and languages are transmitted separately and their distributions reflect different aspects of human history, but some demographic processes can cause them to be similarly distributed. In particular, forms of societal organization, including movements in and out of a community, may have shaped the transmission of both genes and languages. If children were more likely to learn their mother's language than their father's when their parents were from populations that spoke different languages or dialects, then language variation might show a closer association with maternally transmitted genetic markers than autosomal ones; this association could be further reinforced if children reside with predominantly maternal kin. We analyze the worldwide relationship between linguistic and genomic variation, leveraging the sex-biased transmission of X chromosomes to assess whether language has tended to be preferentially transmitted along the male or female line. In addition, we measure the effects of postmarital residence with female kin, matrilineal descent, and endogamy on the covariation of mitochondrial DNA and languages, using mtDNA because genomic data were available for very few populations with these ethnographic traits. We find that while there is little evidence for a consistent or widespread sex bias in the transmission of language, such biased transmission may have occurred locally in several parts of the world and might have been influenced by population-level ethnographic characteristics, such as female-based descent or residence patterns. Our results highlight the complex relationships between genes, language, ethnography, and geography.

Chapter 15 - Middle Holocene climate change and human population dispersal in western North America

We present a case-study of a collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists that has helped settle a long-standing controversy and opened up new research questions for the Pacific region. The work provided insights into the history of human settlement and cultural changes in Vanuatu in the western Pacific, which in turn shed light on the origins of the cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes the archipelago. Close interdisciplinary collaborations like this maximize the potential of ancient DNA to contribute to our understanding of the past and advance the scholarship of practitioners in both disciplines.

Chapter 7 - The Use of Linguistic Data in Bioarchaeological Research: An Example From the American Southwest

This paper is a review of how and why the race concept has changed in the United States during the 20th century. In the 19th century the concept of race provided the unchallenged folk taxonomy and the prevailing scientific paradigm for placing human biological and cultural variation into categories called races. At the height of the eugenic and anti-immigration movement of the early decades of the 20th century, Boas and his students began the critique of racism and aspects of the race concept. In the early 1950s Washburn proposed that the modern synthesis replace race typology with the study of processes and populations. In the 1960s new data on clinal genetic gradations provided tools for studying human variation while challenging the race concept. We present several kinds of documentation of the decline of the race concept over the 20th century, and place the above changes in the context of the essential development of new genetic evidence. We also relate the decline of race to historical developments, the growth of the culture concept, and the biographies of the participants. We reject political correctness and view science as a self-correcting endeavor to relate concepts to the empirical world.

IntroductionPufferfish are valuable ingredients and important fishery resources in Asia. Among them, approximately 25 Takifugu species have undergone explosive speciation in the marine environments of East Asia. Specifically, T. rubripes, T. pseudommus, and T. chinensis are remarkably similar in appearance and genetics, and their classification remains controversial. Here, we provide comprehensive genetic and genomic evidence regarding their speciation and classification.MethodsWhole genome sequencing was performed on T. pseudommus, leading to the identification and development of 15 novel tandem simple sequence repeats (SSRs) from its genomic data. Genetic diversity, differentiation, and population structure among T. rubripes, T. pseudommus, T. chinensis, and T. xanthopterus were subsequently analyzed using a combination of these 15 SSR loci and mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (CoI) and cytochrome b (CytB) gene sequences. Furthermore, genomic variations, including single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions, and deletions, were identified by comparing the genome of T. pseudommus with the reference T. rubripes genome retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. These variations were screened using ENSEMBL annotation and gene ontology analysis, and their potential association with morphological differences, such as dorsal spot patterns, was evaluated using reference Takifugu specimens.Results and discussionPopulation genetic analysis of T. rubripes, T. pseudommus, and T. chinensis using the CoI and CytB genes, combined with the 15 SSR loci, revealed clustering into a single genetic group characterized by remarkably low genetic diversity (four haplotypes, with diversity values ranging from 0.0000 to 0.00065) and minimal pairwise differentiation (microsatellite-based FST values ranging from -0.0021 to 0.0075). Additionally, comparative genomic analysis between T. pseudommus and the reference T. rubripes genome did not identify genetic variations that could directly explain the observed morphological differences among the species. These findings strongly suggest that T. rubripes, T. pseudommus, and T. chinensis represent a single species sharing a common genetic pool.