Introduction to Linguistics Lecture 12: Language maintenance, shift and death

Schedule today Language maintenance, shift and death: Introduction Language maintenance, shift and death (symbolic power, see last week’s class) Case study: Native Americans Assignment (10 marks)

Language maintenance, shift and death: Intro Language shift Language maintenance Language death

Language shift “The change from the habitual use of one language to that of another” in a particular speech community/society (Uriel Weinreich 1968) The replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization within a community

Language maintenance “the continuing use of a language in the face of competition from a regionally and socially more powerful language” This is the opposite of language shift

Language death “is used when the community is the last one in the world to use that language” Example: Tasmanian – death without shift

Language death Although languages like Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit are often referred to as dead languages, we don’t use them as examples of language death. These language have gradually evolved by continuous transmission from one generation into next, and spread into regional dialects which gave rise to autonomous and eventually standardized speech forms Latin lives as modern French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian Hebrew provides the unusual example of a language which did ‘die’ but was revived with considerable effort in the late 19th and early 20th century

Language death: 4 types There are four types of language death: Gradual death: involves the gradual replacement of one language by another (so it involves language shift), example is the replacement of Gaelic by English in parts of Scotland Sudden death: rapid extinction of a language, without an intervening period of bilingualism. Radical death: due to severe political repression, a community may opt, out of self-defense, to stop speaking their language. The last speakers are thus fluent in the language, but don’t transmit it to their children. ‘Bottom-up’ death: a language ceases to exist as a medium of conversation, but may survive in special use like religion or folk songs.

Causes of shift One of the few points of agreement in studies of minority and immigrant languages that there is no single set of factors that can predict the outcome of language-maintenance Causes of shifts are generally multiple and interrelated: The absence or presence of higher education in the dominated language Relatively large or relatively small number of speakers of the dominated language Greater similarity or greater dissimilarity between groups speaking the dominant and dominated languages Positive or hostile attitudes of the dominant group towards the minority group

Causes of shift Some linguists have pointed to specific factors that have, in practice, caused the decline of certain languages. These factors can be grouped as follows: Economic changes Status Demography Institutional support

1) Economic changes Economic changes are by far the most salient of the factors leading to shift In many countries, modernization, industrialization and urbanization often lead to bilingualism: vernacular language + wider regional language associated with economy Example: Wales (Jones 1990, p. 250 in your book)

2) Demographic factors The smaller the size of a community, the stronger the threat of language shift and death The distribution of speakers is also of significance: enforced or de facto segregation would appear to offer better chances of language maintenance (!): Kosovo – Albanians vs. Serbs Example: third-generation Chinese Americans in Chinese-dominated neighborhoods (Chinatowns) Endogamy (i.e. marriage restricted to within the group)

3) Institutional support The use of a minority language in education, religion, the media or administration may assist attempts to bolster its position. This can only be done at great cost. There are limits to the extent to which a non- dominant immigrant language can be used in schools: there is a major asymmetry between the use of a minority language in educational settings and the hyper-colloquial and localized use characteristic of a language in its dying stages Amish community and German (Pennsylvania)

Example: The Amish The institution of religion is the most significant factor for language maintenance

4) Status Some writers consider a group’s self-esteem and the status of their language to play a role in maintenance or shift Example: Arabic: high status vs. low status

The course of Shift A shift from one language to another cannot be effected without an intervening period of bilingualism in the shifting community A. Initial phases: languages may show specific distribution patterns over specific domains Public domains and formal ones may be allotted to the dominant societal language Informal and personal domains for the minority language B. Later phases: progressive redistribution of the languages over these domains: religion, home, folk songs and tales are then the last domains in which the minority/dominated language is used

The course of shift and speaker competence The shrinkage of domains in the course of shift is paralleled by receding competence in successive generations of the shifting community From full command to zero command: Young fluent speakers (phase 1) Passive bilingual speakers (phase 2) Semi-speakers (phase 3)

1) Young fluent speakers Are those who have native command of the ancestral language, but who show subtle deviations from the norms of fluent, older speakers Important: In other words, you’re not a fluent speaker of the language, it is already in its early stage of shift

2) Passive bilinguals Are able to understand the ancestral language (even down to its finest nuances), but are unable to use the language in productive speech. Important: they understand it, but they don’t speak it

3) Semi-speakers Are those whose ability to speak the ancestral language is flawed, but who continue using it in certain contexts in an imperfect way Example: Gaelic in east Sutherland, Scotland

Case study: Language contact, maintenance and shift among native Americans

Case study: native Americans American Indian languages offer fertile ground for understanding language maintenance and shift from the perspective of the dispossessed. More than 200 American Indian languages are still spoken in the USA and Canada, in spite of 400 years of Indo-American internal colonialism. At the time of discovery, more than 500 languages were spoken in North America This case study discusses maintenance, shift and other social pressures which have played out at several different points in American-Indian language history

Case study: native Americans There are 4 stages to be discussed (Leap 1993): Inter-tribal contact European linguistic colonialism New simplified or mixed lingua franca’s English-language schooling

Assignment 10% Take a photo of a ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ sign in your city or neighborhood, give some explanation about the sign: why is it top down – why bottom up? How many languages are displayed on the sign, and why? Are there language policies regulating the sign which impose the use of languages? Which language is placed first, which second (and which is third?) What does the sign tell us about the linguistic relations between the ethnic groups in Kosovo?

Examples