LIN 2300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Heritage Language, Endangered Language, Language Shift

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LIN 2300
• Professor: Gustavo Freire

Document Summary

Language birth and death (part 2); endangerment and ecology. The 9 vitality factors proposed by unesco. Emerging bilingualism (l1 cans till be saved) Younger generation shifts to l2: shame at using l1, leads to; self-conscious semi-lingualism, and/or, l2 mono-lingualism. Languages contribute to the sum of human knowledge. Languages are interesting in themselves: value to linguistic science, irreplaceable cultural heritage etc. Languages are treasure houses of information on literature, history, philosophy, and art. Their stories, ideas, and words help us make sense of our lives and the word around us. Specific knowledge is often held by the smaller speech communities of the world: knowledge of medicinal plants and cures, identification of plants and animals yet unknown scientifically, new crops, etc. Scientific understanding of human language: linguists have the goal of understanding what is possible and impossible in human languages, through the study of human language capacity, of advancing knowledge of how the human mind works.