@inproceedings{bird-2026-towards,
    title = "Towards a general theory of linguistic diversity",
    author = "Bird, Steven",
    editor = "Ojha, Atul Kr.  and
      Sakti, Sakriani  and
      Soria, Claudia  and
      Melero, Maite  and
      McCrae, John P.  and
      Lignos, Constantine  and
      Liu, Chao-Hong  and
      Claramunt, German Rigau  and
      Rehm, Georg",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the {SIGUL} 2026 Joint Workshop with {ELE}, {EURALI}, and {DCLRL}: Towards Inclusivity and Equality: Language Resources and Technologies for Under-Resourced and Endangered Languages",
    month = may,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Palma, Mallorca, Spain",
    publisher = "ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/revision-workflow/2026.sigul-1.18/",
    doi = "10.63317/27xpbzgmsuxp",
    pages = "169--182",
    abstract = "The world{'}s languages are commonly categorised in terms of available language technologies such as speech recognition and machine translation. On this view, ``under-resourced languages'' suffer from language barriers which cut people off from markets, healthcare, human rights, and AI. The ``solution'' is more funding for language technologies, opening the way to a utopia of digital language equality and AI-enabled mobility. Yet the world{'}s linguistic diversity is not a set of language objects to be pushed up a cline from emerging to thriving. It consists of polyglossic communities who have long used vernaculars for local functions and dominant languages for external functions. I present a new theory of linguistic diversity which places the world of vernaculars alongside the world of institutional languages, and articulates diverse language technology agendas that lie within and between these worlds."
}