Language death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (May 2007)

In linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction, and sometimes pejoratively as linguicide) is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language idiom is decreased.

Total language death occurs when there are no speakers of a given language idiom remaining in a population where the idiom was previously used (i.e. when all native speakers die). Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages.

The study of language loss at the individual level focuses on what is lost - a first language (L1) or a second language (L2) - and where it is lost - in an L1 or L2 environment.

Contents

[edit] Types of language death

 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:

  • gradual language death
  • bottom-to-top language death
  • radical language death
  • linguicide (a.k.a. sudden language death, language death by genocide, physical language death, biological language death)

The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige. Languages can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide, disease, or the rare event of devastating natural catastrophe.

A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund.[1] The process of attrition occurs when intergenerational transmission of a "heritage language", mother tongue or native language has effectively stopped. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. For example, a family's adults may speak in an older native language, but when they have children, they may not pass on this language, and therefore the language dies in that family. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language.

[edit] Language attrition

Main article: Language attrition

Language attrition is the loss of a language or portion of a language, by either a speech community or an individual. Four areas of loss are defined by what is lost, the first language (L1) or the second language (L2), and where it is lost, in the L1 or L2 environment.[2]

[edit] Sociolinguistic causes

Sociolinguistics may play a role in language death if the constructions of society fail to support linguistic diversity. Language policies may be used to protect languages from extinction, and terms such as “linguistic human rights” have welcomed an increasing awareness of the socio-strategic dichotomy of natural rights and linguistic freedom. Lack of awareness is arguably a prominent cause of language death, when native speakers of the dominant language fail to recognize the contributing aspects of a multi-lingual community, and in turn, the language policies restrict rather than protect the minority language. When the resources for linguistic maintenance lessen and socio-economic stability relies heavily on proficiency in the dominant language, an extinction of the minority language is plausible.

[edit] Consequences on grammar

 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


During language loss--usually referred to as obsolescence in the linguistic literature literature--changes caused by language death often result. These changes can be of several types, including:

[edit] Language revitalization

Main article: Language revitalization

Sometimes language death can be reversed, as has happened with the Hebrew language in Israel. However, the success of such programs is rare, with the case of Hebrew being one of the few large-scale language revival process that has achieved some degree of success, despite the fact that it was extinct in everyday use for an extended period, and was only used as a liturgical language.

Other cases of language revitalization which have seen some degree of success are Welsh and Hawai'ian.

[edit] Language loss and language acquisition

Some linguists have suggested a comparison between language death/attrition phenomena and language acquisition, where language death is viewed as a kind of language acquisition in reverse. Together, language loss and language acquisition can co-exist when a speaker acquires a second language and fails to exercise and preserve the first. This process is often noted as a shift to monolingualism, when one relies on a temporal identity to better adhere to social economy and linguistic hierarchy. Some linguists argue it is the “inside-language” that affects the preference of the dominant language because linguistic minorities cannot be fully aware of the language living inside themselves, and therefore take for granted the social relevance of their native language. In struggling to build identity and understand media coverage and economic benchmarks, we may often see a preference of the dominant language, and continually a loss of exercise in the minority language. Some linguistic minorities may be shocked to find their language near extinction, but the idea that even to communicate that frustration, one must raise awareness in the dominant language, reveals the preference of the dominant language for cross-cultural understanding.

[edit] Dead languages and normal language change

Linguists distinguish between language "death" and the process where a language becomes a "dead language" through normal language change, a linguistic phenomenon similar to pseudoextinction. This happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, Old English may be regarded as a "dead language", with no native speakers, although it has never "died" but instead simply changed and developed into Modern English. The process of language change may also involve the splitting up of a language into a family of several daughter languages, leaving the common parent language "dead". This has happened to Latin, which (through Vulgar Latin) eventually developed into the family of Romance languages. Such a process is normally not described as "language death", because it involves an unbroken chain of normal transmission of the language from one generation to the next, with only minute changes at every single point in the chain. Therefore, there is absolutely no point in time when "Latin died".

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Crystal, David (2000) Language Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ Crystal, David (2000) Language Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  3. ^ Dorian, Nancy C. (1978). Fate of morphological complexity in language death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic. Language, 54 (3), 590-609.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Abley, Mark. (2003). Spoken here: Travels among threatened languages. London: Heinemann.
  • Aitchinson, Jean. (1991). Language change: progress or decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bastardas-Boada, Albert (2007). "Linguistic sustainabiliy for a multilingual humanity", Glossa. An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, num. 2.
  • Batibo, Herman M. (2005). Language decline and death in Africa: Causes, consequences, and challenges. Multilingual Matters.
  • Brenzinger, Matthias (Ed.). (1992). Language death: Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Brenzinger, Matthais (Ed.). (1998). Endangered languages in Africa. Cologne: Rüdiger Köper Verlag.
  • Broderick, George. (1999). Language Death in the Isle of Man. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ISBN 3484303956.
  • Calvet, Louis-Jean. (1998). Language wars and linguistic politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle. (1994). Language death. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 1960-1968). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle; & Muntzel, M. (1989). The structural consequences of language death. In N. C. Dorian (Ed.).
  • Cantoni-Harvey, Gina (Ed.). (1997). Stabilizing indigenous languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University, Center for Excellence in Education.
  • Crystal, David. (2000). Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65321-5.
  • Crystal, David. (2004). Language revolution. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Dalby, Andrew. (2003). Language in danger: The loss of linguistic diversity and the threat to our future. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12900-9.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (1997). The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Dorian, Nancy C. (1973). Grammatical change in a dying dialect. Language, 49, 413-438.
  • Dorian, Nancy C. (1978). Fate of morphological complexity in language death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic. Language, 54 (3), 590-609.
  • Dorian, Nancy C. (1981). Language death: The life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Dorian, Nancy C. (Ed.). (1989). Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death. Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language (No. 7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32405-X.
  • Dressler, Wolfgand & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (eds.) (1977) Language death (International Journal of the Sociology of Language vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
  • Dressler, Wolfgand U.; & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (Eds.). (1977). Language death. International Journal of the Sociology of Language (Vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
  • Fishman, Joshua A. (1991). Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
  • Grenoble, Lenore A.; & Whaley, Lindsay J. (Eds.). (1998). Endangered languages: Current issues and future prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hagège, Claude. (1992). Le souffle de la langue. Paris: Odile Jacob.
  • Hagège, Claude. (2000). Halte à la mort des langues. Paris: Editions Odille Jacob.
  • Hale, Ken; Krauss, Michael; Watahomigie, Lucille J.; Yamamoto, Akira Y.; Craig, Colette; Jeanne, LaVerne M. et al. (1992). Endangered languages. Language, 68 (1), 1-42.
  • Harmon, David. (2002). In light of our differences: How diversity in nature and culture makes us human. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
  • Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-518192-1.
  • Hazaël-Massieux, Marie-Christine. (1999). Les créoles: L'indispensable survie. Paris: Editions Entente.
  • Hill, Jane. (1983). Language death in Uto-Aztecan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49, 258-27.
  • Hinton, Leanne; & Hale, Ken (Eds.). (2001). The green book of language revitalization in practice. San Diego: Academic Press.
  • Janse, Mark; & Tol, Sijmen (Eds.). (2003). Language death and language maintenance: Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. ISBN 90-272-4752-8; ISBN 1-58811-382-5.
  • Joseph, Brian D. (Ed.). (2003). When languages collide: Perspectives on language conflict, language competition, and language coexistence. Columbus: Ohio State University.
  • Maffi, Lusia (Ed.). (2001). On biocultural diversity: Linking language, knowledge, and the environment. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
  • Maurais, Jacques; & Morris, Michael A. (Eds.). (2003). Languages in a globalizing world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mohan, Peggy; & Zador, Paul. (1986). Discontinuity in a life cycle: The death of Trinidad Bhojpuri. Language, 62 (2), 291-319.
  • Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mühlhäusler, Peter. (1996). Linguistic ecology: Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region. London: Routledge.
  • Nettle, Daniel; & Romaine, Suzanne. (2000). Vanishing voices: The extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513624-1.
  • Phillipson, Robert. (2003). English only?: Challenging language policy. London: Routledge.
  • Reyhner, Jon (Ed.). (1999). Revitalizing indigenous languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University, Center for Excellence in Education. ISBN 0-9670554-0-7.
  • Robins, R. H.; & Uhlenbeck, E. M. (1991). Endangered languages. Oxford: Berg.
  • Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. (1990). Theory of language death, und, language decay and contact-induced change: Similarities and differences. Arbeitspapier (No. 12). Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln.
  • Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. (1992). Theory of language death. In M. Brenzinger (Ed.) (pp. 7-30).
  • Schilling-Estes, Natalie; & Wolfram, Walt. (1999). Alternative models of dialect death: Dissipation vs. concentration. Language, 75 (3), 486-521.
  • Skutnab-Kangas, Tove. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education—or world-wide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • de Swaan, Abram. (2001). Words of the world: The global language system. Cambeidge, UK: Polity Press.
  • Thomason, Sarah G. (2001). Language contact: An introduction. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

[edit] External links