Small-language fates and prospects : : lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages : collected essays / / by Nancy C. Dorian.

• Superior document: Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, Volume 6
• VerfasserIn: Dorian, Nancy C.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : Brill,, 2014.; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's studies in language, cognition and culture ; Volume 6.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (490 p.)
• Notes: Includes index.
• Other title: Preliminary Material /; Introduction /; 1 Grammatical Change in a Dying Dialect (1973) /; 2 The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Scottish Gaelic Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic (1978) /; 3 Making do with Less: Some Surprises along the Language Death Proficiency Continuum (1986) /; 4 Negative Borrowing in an Indigenous Language Shift to the Dominant National Language (2006) /; 5 The Problem of the Semi-Speaker in Language Death (1977) /; 6 Language Shift in Community and Individual: The Phenomenon of the Laggard Semi-Speaker (1980) /; 7 Defining the Speech Community to Include its Working Margins (1982) /; 8 Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families? (1986) /; 9 Age and Speaker Skills in Receding Language Communities: How Far do Community Evaluations and Linguists’ Evaluations Agree? (2009) /; 10 Linguistic Lag as an Ethnic Marker (1980) /; 11 Language Loss and Maintenance in Language Contact Situations (1982) /; 12 The Value of Language-Maintenance Efforts which are Unlikely to Succeed (1987) /; 13 The Ambiguous Arithmetic of Language Maintenance and Revitalization (2011) /; 14 Purism vs. Compromise in Language Revitalization and Language Revival (1994) /; 15 Western Language Ideologies and Small-Language Prospects (1998) /; 16 Bi- and Multilingualism in Minority and Endangered Languages (2004) /; 17 Stylistic Variation in a Language Restricted to Private-Sphere Use (1994) /; 18 Telling the Monolinguals from the Bilinguals: Unrealistic Code Choices in Direct Quotations within Scottish Gaelic Narratives (1997) /; 19 Celebrations: In Praise of the Particular Voices of Languages at Risk (1999) /; 20 Gathering Language Data in Terminal Speech Communities (1986) /; 21 Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic Variability amidst Social Uniformity (2001) /; 22 Documentation and Responsibility (2010) /; 23 The Private and the Public in Language Documentation and Revitalization (2010) /; Author Index /; General Index /
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and indexes.
• ISBN: 9004261931
• ISSN: 1879-5412
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: by Nancy C. Dorian.

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.