LING 2420 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: David Crystal
5 Sep 2016
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Safe languages: official government support/large number of speakers (10% of the world"s languages are safe) Endangered languages: although still being learned by children, will cease to be in the next century if present conditions persist. Moribund (latin for about to die ) languages: have ceased to be learned by children and almost certainly doomed to extinction. Dead/extinct languages: no longer spoken by anyone, even with written or recorded materials. Why should we care? (david crystal: we need diversity, language expresses identity, languages are repositories of history, languages contribute to the sum of human knowledge, languages are interesting in themselves. Discrimination of minority groups, forced assimilation to dominant group (ex. residential schools) Index of undesirable social categories due to discrimination and marginalization: the dominant language may index desirable attributes, access to education, amenities of modern life. Language obsolescence: limited use of language, reduction of grammar and lexicon as people speak it less. Relationship to community at large (including marriage patterns)
