Investigating Obsolescence Studies in Language Contraction and Death [Hardcover]

This collection will certainly stimulate further and better co-ordinated research into a topic of direct relevance to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.Over the past 500 years, half the known languages of the world have vanished. This comprehensive overview of contracting and dying languages, investigates the broad scope currently under threat of extinction.Over the past 500 years, half the known languages of the world have vanished. This comprehensive overview of contracting and dying languages, investigates the broad scope currently under threat of extinction.Over the past 500 years, half the known languages of the world have vanished. This comprehensive overview of the study of contracting and dying languages, composed of twenty essays, investigates the wide scope of languages currently under threat of extinction. These disappearances occur in diverse speech communities where the expanding languages are both familiar, such as English or Spanish, and less familiar, such as Swedish, Thai and Arabic. The volume concludes with a look at how research into language obsolescence may affect other aspects of linguistics and anthropology--first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, the study of pidgins and creoles, language and social process.List of maps; List of contributors; Preface; Introduction; Part I. Focus on Context: 1. On language death in eastern Africa Gerrit J. Dimmendaal; 2. The disappearance of the Ugong in Thailand David Bradley; 3. Scottish and Irish Gaelic: the giant's bed-fellows Seosamh Watson; 4. The rise and fall of an immigrant language: Norwegian in America Einar Haugen; 5. Breton vs. French: language and the opposition of political, economic, social, and cultural values Lois Kuter; 6. 'Persistence' or 'tip' in Egyptian Nubian Aleya Rouchdy; 7. Sociolinguistic creativity: Cape Breton Gaelic's linguistic 'tip' Elizabeth Mertz; 8. Skewed performance and full performance in language obsolescence: the case of an AllCs