LIGN 177 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Folk Taxonomy, Hixkaryana Language, Scottish Gaelic
Document Summary
Language death: a language dies when nobody speaks it anymore crystal (2000), language. Death: languages do not literally die" or go extinct", since they are not living organisms. Rather, they are crowded out by bigger [and dominant] languages. Harrison (2007), p. 5: these languages are talked about as sleeping" or moribund" no longer being learned by children. It is not being used but if there is enough documentation of it, it can be woken up again and revitalized: krauss (1992) estimates that 90% of the world"s languages would be severely endangered by 2100. Size and location matters: not merely dependent on the number of speakers. Isolated communities have better chance of language survival: karitiana (brazil) 185/191 speak the language, isolated amazonian community, scots gaelic (scotland) 30,000 but english dominates, sora 300,000 in orissa state, india threatened. Critical factor for language death children.
