The loss of diversity in the modern world is reaching critical proportions. The remaining forests contain plants with medicinal uses that are known to the people who live in the forests. In many cases their nature and value have not yet been investigated by modern medicine. How could they ever be, if the plants are destroyed as a consequence of forest-clearing, or if the people who know them are assimilated into the mainstream of their nation, thereby losing traditional knowledge?

Language is the most precious human resource. Each language has a different phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic organisation from every other. Only by studying the varied possibilities across all languages can we gain a general picture of the nature of the human brain as it relates to language activity. By examining the ways meanings are organised in some little-known language, the linguist may shed light on some universal feature of semantic structure, or evolve some new mode of thinking that could help to deal with problems in the modern world.

The next section will provide examples of linguistic parameters, their interrelations and their sequential changes, illustrating why it is important to document every known language. §9.2 exposes a myth of modern linguistics that is crippling the discipline. And §9.3 details what the work priorities should be for people who call themselves linguists.

Why bother?

It is estimated that of the 5,000 or so languages spoken in the world today at least three-quarters (some people say 90% or more) will have ceased to be spoken by the year 2100, as a consequence of the punctuations engendered in the first place by European colonisation.