Small-language fates and prospects : lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages : collected essays / / By Nancy C. Dorian ; With a Foreword By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Robert M. Dixon

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910954488603321
• Autore: Dorian Nancy C
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Leiden : , : Brill, , 2014
• ISBN: 9789004261938; 9004261931
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (490 p.)
• Collana: Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture ; ; 6
• Disciplina: 491.6/3
• Soggetti: Endangered languages; Scottish Gaelic language - Dialects - Scotland
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Includes index.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and indexes.
• Nota di contenuto: 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.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.