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.

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.

Table of 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.