Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, Series Number 7)

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. Languages die for political, economic and cultural reasons, and can disappear remarkably quickly. Between ten and fifty per cent of all languages currently spoken can be considered endangered, but it is only in the past ten years or so that due importance has been given to the study of contracting and dying languages. This volume represents the first attempt to give a broad overview of current research in a developing field, and to examine some of the crucial methodological and theoretical issues to which it has given rise. It includes twenty studies by scholars who, taken together, have worked on a range of languages currently under threat across the globe. They occur in diverse speech communities where the expanding languages are not only those that are very familiar -- English, Spanish, or French, for example -- but also Swedish, Arabic, Thai, etc. The final part of the volume is devoted to a consideration of the implications of research into language obsolescence for other aspects of linguistics and anthropology -- first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, and the study of pidgins and creoles and of language and social process. As a whole, this collection will certainly stimulate further and better co-ordinated research into a topic of direct relevance to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. Languages die for political, economic and cultural reasons, and can disappear remarkably quickly. Between ten and fifty per cent of all languages currently spoken can be considered endangered, but it is only in the past ten years or so that due importance has been given to the study of contracting and dying languages. This volume represents the first attempt to give a broad overview of current research in a developing field, and to examine some of the crucial methodological and theoretical issues to which it has given rise. It includes twenty studies by scholars who, taken together, have worked on a range of languages currently under threat across the globe. They occur in diverse speech communities where the expanding languages are not only those that are very familiar - English, Spanish, or French, for example - but also Swedish, Arabic, Thai et cetera The final part of the volume is devoted to a consideration of the implications of research into language obsolescence for other aspects of linguistics and anthropology - first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, and the study of pidgins and creoles and of language and social process. As a whole, this collection will certainly stimulate further and better co-ordinated research into a topic of direct relevance to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics Eastern Africa does not constitute a unit linguistically or culturally.