Small-language fates and prospects : lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages : collected essays / By Nancy C. Dorian ; With a Foreword By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Robert M. Dixon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dorian, Nancy C.

Series:

Brill's studies in language, cognition and culture ; Volume 6.

Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Endangered languages.

Scottish Gaelic language--Dialects--Scotland.

Scottish Gaelic language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (490 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden : Brill, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Small-language Fates and Prospects Nancy C. Dorian gathers findings from decades of documenting an endangered Scottish Gaelic dialect, presenting detailed evidence of contraction and loss but also recording a positive role for imperfect speakers. Retention of language skills undervalued by linguists but positively viewed by the community has supported the survival of local Gaelic-English bilingualism well beyond early predictions. Nonetheless, potent factors that threaten small-language survival everywhere have also operated here. Negative social attitudes towards the minority population, loss of a traditional occupation, the increasing impact of majority-culture ideologies, are recurrent phenomena in small-language settings. Maintenance or revitalization efforts pose special challenges under these circumstances, as does fieldwork itself when adverse sociohistorical forces have left very few fluent speakers.

Contents:

Preliminary Material / Nancy C. Dorian

Introduction / Nancy C. Dorian

1 Grammatical Change in a Dying Dialect (1973) / Nancy C. Dorian

2 The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Scottish Gaelic Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic (1978) / Nancy C. Dorian

3 Making do with Less: Some Surprises along the Language Death Proficiency Continuum (1986) / Nancy C. Dorian

4 Negative Borrowing in an Indigenous Language Shift to the Dominant National Language (2006) / Nancy C. Dorian

5 The Problem of the Semi-Speaker in Language Death (1977) / Nancy C. Dorian

6 Language Shift in Community and Individual: The Phenomenon of the Laggard Semi-Speaker (1980) / Nancy C. Dorian

7 Defining the Speech Community to Include its Working Margins (1982) / Nancy C. Dorian

8 Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families? (1986) / Nancy C. Dorian

9 Age and Speaker Skills in Receding Language Communities: How Far do Community Evaluations and Linguists’ Evaluations Agree? (2009) / Nancy C. Dorian

10 Linguistic Lag as an Ethnic Marker (1980) / Nancy C. Dorian

11 Language Loss and Maintenance in Language Contact Situations (1982) / Nancy C. Dorian

12 The Value of Language-Maintenance Efforts which are Unlikely to Succeed (1987) / Nancy C. Dorian

13 The Ambiguous Arithmetic of Language Maintenance and Revitalization (2011) / Nancy C. Dorian

14 Purism vs. Compromise in Language Revitalization and Language Revival (1994) / Nancy C. Dorian

15 Western Language Ideologies and Small-Language Prospects (1998) / Nancy C. Dorian

16 Bi- and Multilingualism in Minority and Endangered Languages (2004) / Nancy C. Dorian

17 Stylistic Variation in a Language Restricted to Private-Sphere Use (1994) / Nancy C. Dorian

18 Telling the Monolinguals from the Bilinguals: Unrealistic Code Choices in Direct Quotations within Scottish Gaelic Narratives (1997) / Nancy C. Dorian

19 Celebrations: In Praise of the Particular Voices of Languages at Risk (1999) / Nancy C. Dorian

20 Gathering Language Data in Terminal Speech Communities (1986) / Nancy C. Dorian

21 Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic Variability amidst Social Uniformity (2001) / Nancy C. Dorian

22 Documentation and Responsibility (2010) / Nancy C. Dorian

23 The Private and the Public in Language Documentation and Revitalization (2010) / Nancy C. Dorian

Author Index / Nancy C. Dorian

General Index / Nancy C. Dorian.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

ISBN:

9789004261938

9004261931

OCLC:

879527397

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004261938 DOI