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This article provides an initial sociolinguistic and structural characterization of the multilingual repertoire of the Haitian migrant community in Chapecó, Santa Catarina, Brazil, based on a corpus of interviews I compiled myself. The focus is primarily on two languages from the repertoire, French and Spanish, which I consider ‘forgotten’ in two senses. First, in a scholarly context, since studies in migration linguistics often pay less attention to languages that are neither the in-group language of the migrant population (in this case, Haitian Creole) nor the main language of the host country (in this case, Portuguese); indeed, French is the official, post-colonial language used by the social elites in the homeland, while Spanish is the language of a first country of migration (the Dominican Republic) for some Haitians before their current migration to Brazil. Second, at the cognitive level, because although these languages are part of the speakers’ experiential baggage, they are seldom actively spoken in the new Brazilian context. Lastly, the article highlights how speakers efficiently utilize the different languages in their repertoire, giving rise to contact-induced linguistic features (which, following traditional criteria, are classified here as the result of transfer or borrowing).

Long-term contact with English has led to the presence in Guernésiais of a considerable number of lone English-origin lexical items (Jones, 2015). Although the presence of such items was being noted as far back as the nineteenth century, this is the first study to analyse and document them systematically. Using extensive original data, it examines these lexical items in relation to each part of speech and discusses their use in Guernésiais in the broader context of language contact. The study also considers whether, and how, lone English-origin lexical items become assimilated phonologically and morphosyntactically and whether frequency and motivation have a bearing on their usage. Résumé: Le contact de longue durée avec l'anglais a conduit à la présence en guernésiais d'un nombre considérable d'éléments lexicaux isolés d'origine anglaise (Jones, 2015). Bien que la présence de ces éléments ait été notée dès le dix-neuvième siècle, cette étude est la première à les analyser et à les documenter de manière systématique. À l'aide de nombreuses données originales, elle examine ces éléments lexicaux en relation avec chaque partie du discours et discute de leur utilisation en guernésiais dans le contexte plus large du contact linguistique. L'étude examine également si, et comment, les éléments lexicaux isolés d'origine anglaise sont assimilés sur le plan phonologique et morphosyntaxique et si la fréquence et la motivation ont une influence sur leur utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

‘Death’, ‘dying’, ‘dead’, ‘extinct’, ‘endangered’, ‘murdered’, ‘resurrected’ etc. The language-death-metaphor for language loss has permeated the contemporary linguistic literature for decades and decades. While biological metaphors for language have served a function historically in the study of language endangerment, this paper aims to outline how the language-death-metaphor specifically fails in that functioning. Maybe, the metaphor does not actually articulate what we are trying to articulate about a process common to all languages. This paper will dissect ‘language death’ cross-linguistically, investigating the changes in morphology, the loss of domains, creolization, and language shift that are all often purported to be ‘symptomatic’ of a language in its ‘last days’. I will then propose an alternative term, ‘phasing’, that might more clearly describe the process by which a language becomes more or less dynamic, more or less adaptable, more or less use(ful)d over time. The more accurate the terminology, the more specific the tool, the more that might be done to assist from the periphery in language reclamation efforts, to aid in slowing or reversing the process of linguistic loss, and to support the speakers of ‘dying’ languages more productively in their already ongoing effort(s).

'Death', 'dying', 'dead', 'extinct', 'endangered', 'murdered', 'resurrected' etc. The language-death-metaphor for language loss has permeated the contemporary linguistic literature for decades and decades. While biological metaphors for language have served a function historically in the study of language endangerment, this paper aims to outline how the language-death-metaphor specifically fails in that functioning. Maybe, the metaphor does not actually articulate what we are trying to articulate about a process common to all languages. This paper will dissect 'language death' cross-linguistically, investigating the changes in morphology, the loss of domains, creolization, and language shift that are all often purported to be 'symptomatic' of a language in its 'last days'. I will then propose an alternative term, 'phasing', that might more clearly describe the process by which a language becomes more or less dynamic, more or less adaptable, more or less use(ful)d over time. The more accurate the terminology, the more specific the tool, the more that might be done to assist from the periphery in language reclamation efforts, to aid in slowing or reversing the process of linguistic loss, and to support the speakers of 'dying' languages more productively in their already ongoing effort(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and discusses the instances of synchronic variation attested in the personal pronoun paradigm of modern Sri Lanka Portuguese, an endangered Portuguese-based creole spoken by relatively small communities scattered across Eastern and Northern Sri Lanka. Although Sri Lanka Portuguese has a long history of documentation dating from, at least, the beginning of the 19th century, only a few studies have explicitly reported cases of synchronic variation. This study aims, therefore, to fill that gap, by contributing to the description and explanation of patterns of variation relating to the personal pronoun paradigm as encountered in documentary data collected between 2015 and 2020, over several field trips to the districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, Jaffna, and Trincomalee. The nature of the variation observed in the data ranges from phonetic alternations to strategies of paradigm regularization and stylistic shrinkage, often revealing the effects of diachronic processes of variant competition and substitution. Combining the observed patterns of variation with surveyed linguistic trends of language shift, we propose that obsolescence may be responsible for some of the variability encountered in modern SLP personal pronouns, especially that associated with certain socially- or geographically-defined subsets of the speech community (viz. the younger generations and the speakers from Jaffna) characterized by advanced language loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Anglian English was the first British variety of English to be subject to dialectological scrutiny using sociolinguistic techniques (Trudgill, 1974, and his subsequent work) and since then has been subject to only sporadic investigation (e.g. Britain, 1991, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Kingston, 2000; Straw, 2006; Amos, 2011; Potter, 2012, 2018; Butcher, 2015). Recent research has suggested that, in those few locations that have been investigated, East Anglian English is gradually losing some of its traditional dialect features, in favour of forms from the South East more generally. Kingston (2000), Britain (2014a) and Potter (2018) all found, for example, a rather steep decline in the use of East Anglia's traditional third-person present-tense zero. Furthermore, we are aware of the arrival into East Anglia of linguistic innovations from the South East of England, such as TH fronting (Trudgill, 1988; Britain, 2005; Potter, 2012) and /l/ vocalisation (Johnson & Britain, 2007; Potter, 2014), but we only know about their success in a few parts of the region – Norwich, East Suffolk and the Fens. Since Trudgill's investigations across East Anglia in the 1970s, however (e.g. Trudgill & Foxcroft, 1978), and despite a few multilocality studies (Britain, 1991, 2014a; Potter, 2018) no research has been able to provide a picture of the state of the traditional dialect across the whole region. We have therefore only a patchy understanding of the extent to which traditional dialect obsolescence, dialect levelling and innovation diffusion have impacted the dialect landscape of this region as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores a state of abandonment for the signers and speakers of endangered languages and their ethical loneliness due to the failure of linguists to see politics and of social justice-oriented scholars to see such languages. It explains the need to develop an approach to language endangerment that builds on previous research in endangerment linguistics. It also discusses the success of endangerment linguistics as a research program.

The present work presents a critical assessment of claims in recent literature that moribund language varieties exhibit accelerated language decay, and that attrition in individual grammars has a causational relationship with language shift to the majority language. We show these claims to be unfounded. Based on two empirical points taken from moribund heritage varieties of German—complementizer agreement and the restructuring of the morphosyntactic properties of dative case—we provide evidence that (a) attrition in the form of simplification of the heritage grammar is often times minimal, especially when compared to the nonstandard input varieties (rather than to Standard German), and (b) that systematic restructuring of the grammar is a typological pattern in language contact settings. These empirical findings point toward the limited effects of attrition on particular domains of grammar systems across the lifespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centrality of style is uncontested in sociolinguistics: it is an essential construct in the study of linguistic variation and change in the speech community. This is not the case in the language-obsolescence literature, where stylistic variation among endangered-language speakers is described as an ephemeral, or "marginal" resource, and where speakers exhibiting "stylistic shrinkage" become "monostylistic". This argument is invoked in variationist theory too, where "monostylism" is presented as support for the tenets of Audience Design (Bell 1984). This article reports on a study that adopts variationist methods in a context of severe language endangerment. Evidence from two linguistic variables in Francoprovençal demonstrates the presence of socially meaningful stylistic variation among the last generation of fluent speakers, offering counter-evidence to classic claims. This evidence is used to argue that accounts of stylistic variation in language obsolescence are not sufficiently nuanced and should be reconsidered in light of recent research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to Labov's principle of style shifting , studies in language obsolescence portray speakers of dying languages as 'monostylistic', a characterization questioned here. Variationist methodology is adopted in a context of gradual language death. By combining quantitative and interactional analyses of data from older, younger, and new speakers of Francoprovençal in France and Switzerland, the article considers (a) to what extent variability in language obsolescence differs from that found in 'healthy' languages, and (b) how innovations might spread through communities speaking threatened languages characterized as 'monostylistic' and lacking overt normative infrastructure. It is argued that style variation (not monostylism) emerges from linguistic decay: among more fluent speakers, a categorical rule of /l/-palatalization before obstruents becomes underspecified, rendering palatalization available for strategic use. Among new speakers, novel palatal variants form part of an emergent sociolinguistic norm. The study offers fresh insights on the origins of sociolinguistic variation with implications for variationist theory. (Language obsolescence, language death, language variation and change, style variation, new speakers) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the motivation behind the Tonga people's initiation of the language revitalisation process. It is based on research conducted in the Binga District, which was the epicentre of the Tonga language revitalisation project in the Zambezi Valley. The participants in the study were purposively sampled from various stakeholders in the project, inter alia, traditional chiefs, officials from the education sector, former and serving employees of NGOs, members of the Tonga Language and Culture Committee (TOLACCO) and Chairpersons of the Zimbabwe Indigenous Languages Promotion Association (ZILPA). The article identifies a number of socio-cultural and religious factors that motivated and propelled the Tonga people to embark on a project of language revitalisation. Within the theoretical framework of Human Needs Theory, the article critically analyses how these factors motivated the Tonga community to embark upon their language revitalisation initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate semantic formulas of refusal strategies emerging in such various language circumstances as Korean, Chinese, Persian, German, and English and then to account for similarities and differences of refusal strategies in these languages from the perspective of typology. The focus of most previous research has been on employments of refusal strategies of two different culturally-oriented individuals (i.e., usually one language in comparison with English, thereby failing to provide a comprehensive analysis to ensure what strategies languages favor or disfavor in refusing someone. In light of this observation, this paper reanalyzes refusal strategy data in cases of invitation from five language speakers and then adopts the notion of "Markedness Theory" to propose semantic formula hierarchies for each language (Archangeli 1992, Bybee 2011, Hume 2011). Furthermore, this paper suggests that "Explanation" is the most unmarked semantic formula of refusal strategies from the perspective of typology; some marked ones emerge depending on a given language and social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is a case study of the development and teaching of a course on language endangerment and death, including related topics like language preservation, language revitalization and revival, and the historical, socio‐cultural, economic, and political factors behind the recent exacerbation of the depletion of global linguistic diversity. This case study also demonstrates how students can learn to apply methods of evaluating primary and secondary sources towards constructing a web‐based, digital exhibit that explores the story behind endangerment of a specific language. Underlying this case study is the argument that such a course is equally as critical to undergraduate linguistics and general education. It builds on critical discipline‐specific skills and also offers opportunities for broader cross‐disciplinary inquiry and acquisition of professional skills for undergraduate students as young global citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extinction of Tai Ahom, a language from the Tai-Kadai family that was once spoken in Assam, India, can be contributed to a number of sociohistorical, linguistic and cultural factors including the development and strong influence of Assamese, a language from the Indo-Aryan family spoken in that region. In an effort to examine the dynamics that contributed to the loss of Tai Ahom, the current article focuses on a descriptive overview of issues including language shift, variation, and extinction in the case of Tai Ahom. It will also highlight the factors which contributed to its shift and gradual extinction and discuss current efforts to revive the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution gives in its first part an overview on factors of the decay and death of whole languages, focusing on dependency relations between these factors. They are organised along the following dimensions: socio-political, socio-economic, sociocultural, socio-psychological, and linguistic dimensions. The order of these dimensions partially represents a causal chain from left to right, but with many feedback relations. The second part of this article deals with early (socio-)linguistic indicators of language decay and discusses in this respect massive and asymmetric borrowing from the dominant into the recessive language, the loss of productivity of word formation patterns in the latter (illustrated from Breton), changes in name-giving (doubtful), shift of 'foreign accent' from the dominant to the recessive language, borrowing of morphological and syntactic patterns (inconclusive). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for (l) as a sociolinguistic variable in Francoprovençal: (l) refers to variable palatalisation of /l/ in obstruent + lateral onset clusters (/kl, gl, pl, bl, fl/), a feature that has long been the subject of metalinguistic commentary, but no systematic analysis. Our data, which come from a larger study of Francoprovençal (FP), show significant intraspeaker variation. Sociolinguistic interviews were carried out in the Lyonnais region of France among 21 FP speakers with different acquisition routes. /l/-palatalisation is far from categorical in our sample, with increased rates of the French variant [l] over the traditional [j] variant. We interpret these data as contact-induced change: phonological leveling is underway, with convergence towards French. These findings are consistent with the language death literature, and are now widely reported in the context of other minority varieties spoken in the Hexagon. Conversely, some new speakers show different patternswith a greater range of palatalised variants. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that suggest laterals to be a locus for socio-indexical cues cross- linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adeptus is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This commentary focuses on three main topics raised in Mufwene's (2017) target article, in addition to language policy, which I propose must be taken into account in order to support language vitality. First, this commentary explores the nature and role of speaker's agency regarding the fate of their language. Second, it addresses whether it is always the case that populations shift because they sense that preserving a language can marginalize them, since this is presented as a possible cause of language loss in Mufwene's article. Third, it reflects on the role of multilingualism in language death. I argue that multilingualism and/or competing languages need not result in language loss but may rather result in language coexistence, as long as each language fulfills a distinct function. Finally, I explore the key role of language planning and policy in determining the life or death of languages, likely to be one of the most effective ways to ensure language vitality, if the right language policy is adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thousands of the world's languages are said to be rapidly vanishing (Abrams and Strogatz, 2003), and the issue of language death has emerged as one of the most significant phenomena for linguistic study. Research on language loss and death has, however, focused mostly on European-related languages and historical cases have not attracted due attention (Mufwene, 2001, 2004). Moreover, of the many factors argued to be of importance in causing language death, to the best of our knowledge, little reference has been made to language-internal factors. This study explores the historical outcomes of contact between Arabic–Persian and Arabic–Egyptian languages to shed more light on language maintenance or death under contact situations. Providing evidence from languages in contact and analyzing data form Persian–Arabic bilinguals, we explore why Egyptian Coptic died but Persian survived after the invasion of Arabs, and bring up a tentative hypothesis that the surface structural compatibility of the two languages in contact may lead to drastic changes and the possible death of the less dominant and less prestigious language. Structural equivalence/congruence or lack thereof is also suggested as a constraint on the competition-selection process of Mufwene's (2002) feature pool hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research reported here is based on dialectological fieldwork among Lebanese Jews from 2006 to 2015. In the 20th century most Jews of Beirut lived in the Jewish Wādi ˀAbu Žmīl quarter, an area measuring 300 metres by one kilometre. Very few families lived in other parts of the city. The Beirut community consisted of Jews originally Lebanese, Syrian Jews from Aleppo and Damascus, numerous Ashkenazi Jews, Jews originally Maghrebi, some Kurdish Jews, Jews from Turkey and Greece, especially Salonika, and Sephardi Jews originally from Andalusia who reached Beirut after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. The Beirut Jews' dialect differed from that of the Sidon Jews, but in many respects also from the dialects of the Beirut Arabs, lacking highly typical phenomena such as the Imāla. Like diverse other Modern Judeo-Arabic dialects, this one embraces the vast array of vocabulary used in Jewish life. At its height Beirut's Jewish community numbered several thousands, but over time it dwindled and disappeared -- together with its dialect. Most of its speakers left, many of them for Israel, where the fieldwork was undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues against the claim by Emonds and Faarlund (2014, English: The language of the vikings. Palacký University: Olomouc) that English died out after the Norman Conquest, and was replaced by a North Germanic variety referred to as “Anglicised Norse”, which had been formed in the Danelaw area in a concerted effort by the Norse and Anglo-Saxon populations, presumably to overthrow the ruling French elite. Emonds and Faarlund base their claim on the existence of some 20–25 linguistic features which are said to have been absent from Old English, but which are present in Present-Day English and in Scandinavian languages. This article argues that genetic affiliation cannot be inferred from shared syntactic, morphological or lexical features, which may easily result from independent convergence in historically related languages. The main counter-argument, however, is chronological: the majority of the features adduced are indeed attested in Old English and often in other West Germanic languages also, and hence may not be attributed to Old Norse; nor can features which are not attested in English until late Middle English or early Modern English come from Old Norse. The continuity of English in the written record likewise renders the suggested scenario highly unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raji is a little known tribal community whose descendants are the prehistoric Kiratas. They live in dense forests far away from the surrounding Kumauni villages of Pithoragarh district. In 2001 Census their population was reported to be 732 in all the ten villages. Sir George Grierson, in his book ‘Linguistic Survey of India’ had named this language as ‘janggali’ which has only spoken form. Following the framework established by Wurm and the stages of threatenedness discussed in Fishman’s GIDS (1991) Raji can be assessed as “potentially endangered and at stage 6, language which means the language is at risk.” While chalking out a revitalization programme for this oral language I realized the need of orthography development for this language. It is an established fact that Orthography gives stability to a language and not only conserves it but also helps in the standardization process. So after preparing a small grammar book, with the help of collected phonological and grammatical material of Raji the next important task before me was to develop an orthography system. The present paper focuses on the early stages of orthography development for this previously undocumented indigenous language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]