Language Death and Language Shift Research Assignment (Research Paper Sample)

Language Death and Language ShiftNameCourseInstructorInstitutionLocationDateWord Count: 3,637
Introduction
Over the years, there have been marked upsurges both locally and internationally concerning the issue of language endangerment, especially by communities of people who depend on endangered languages (ELs) for communication. Other interested groups encompassed in this concern are the media as well as linguists (Adelaar & Himmelmann 2005). This increased focus and concern on language endangerment has largely stemmed from the growing realisation that the linguistic resources of the world are rapidly shrinking to the extent that only a handful of native languages will survive as others become extinct because of language death or shift. In fact, a study carried out by Aizenberg, Tkachenko, Weiner, Addadi, and Hendler (2001) indicated that world’s languages, in their thousands, are fast vanishing with up to 90% expected to disappear with the twenty-first century generation.
According to the latest empirical studies, only 600 languages all over the world are thought to have a fair chance of surviving the inescapable death (Janse & Tol 2003). This paper therefore sets out to examine the reasons behind such ‘death’ and ‘shift’ in world languages. In order to effectively do so, the author looks at a variety of factors such as isolation and multilingualism attributed to increased calls for globalisation which can be used to help explain the historical data on the decline of world’s languages such as Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Quechua. To help guide the study, the author of the current research paper critically researched on topics such as language contact and displacement, endangered languages, language maintenance, and language death. In addition, special attention is paid to the causes, consequences, and challenges associated with language death and language shift across the globe. Each and every part of this paper will serve to build up on the idea of the concept towards a sound understanding of the current research subject.
Demystifying Language Death and Loss
Although language loss is not a new occurrence, notably, the accelerated rate at which it is presently happening is alarming hence the cause for concern. Throughout the history of linguistics, the processes of language loss and domination have been known and exist even before the arrival of a global language. Certainly, the number of languages that have died since human beings could speak is not clearly known, possibly it must be thousands. Notably, in most of these cases, the death has been as a result of assimilation of one ethnic group within a more dominant society. Without a doubt, when a language becomes extinct, a lot is lost. This adversely affects languages which have not ever been written down or those that were written down in the recent times. It is thus not news that language is the repository of people’s history and more so, their identity. Oral testimony in the form of folktales, rituals, songs, sagas among other practices provide a people with unique views of the world. It is their heritage to the rest of humanity and the moment it is lost it cannot be recaptured (Crystal, 2003).
A language is believed to die when there is nobody to speak that language anymore (Crystal 2003). This point is reiterated by Holmes (1992) who presented a convincing account of why there is a massive death of languages across the globe. Holmes (1992) contends that a language dies when the people who speak it and use it as a mode of communication die. In such a case, the language dies with them. For instance, 50 to 70 Aboriginal languages disappeared in Australia as a consequence of the massacre of the Aboriginal people. Holmes (1992) also attributes the death of languages to peoples’ gradual loss of competence and fluency in their native language.
Consider the following case for instance. Annie is a twenty-year old female young speaker of Dyirbal. Dyirbal is an Australian Aboriginal language. Annie has learnt to speak English at school for purposes of instruction and communication with teachers and other students. At school, Annie has no material published in Dyirbal to read. As a result, she lacks the materials as well as the contexts in which she can speak or hear the language. With time, she steadily becomes less proficient in the language. Now she can only hear what older members of her community using the language say. The loss is quite salient to her grandmother who is scathing about Annie’s ability to speak the language properly (Reworded from Holmes (1992)).
In this study case, Annie is evidently experiencing a great loss in Dyirbal. According to Holmes (1992), Annie’s gradual loss of competence and fluency in Dyirbal is what causes language death. The more she uses English as a primary language of communication, her vocabulary in the native language will undoubtedly shrink until such a time when she will be unable to use language to communicate with the other community members. In such a case, one can confidently say that when Annie’s generation fades from the face of the earth, Dyirbal will certainly die with them.
When two or more languages are in contact for a longer period of time, it is highly probable that in the process some linguistic aspects of those languages will be impacted. According to Thomas and Kauffman (1988, p. 100), in case of long periods of enormous contact between languages there are three possible outcomes, namely: rapid shifting to the ruling language, language attrition or death or language maintenance characterised by massive borrowing in all areas. Basically, language death is not an uncommon or obscure linguistic phenomenon, but is alternatively the outcome of a language contact condition which is found in very many places in the world (Brenzinger 1992).
In the same way each language contact situation is distinct, so is each case of language death. Campbell and Muntzel (1989) categorised language death into four: sudden, radical, gradual and bottom-to-top death. Depending on the intensity of the socio-economic as well as political factors influencing minority language speakers’ communities, the duration taken by gradual language death may vary. That being so, some languages may go through centuries of obsolescence whereas others may perish in relatively short period. Nevertheless, these situations are not mutually exclusive and they may overlap but they provide a useful guide for considering different cases of language death.
Few cases of sudden language loss following death of all its speakers within a short span of time have been documented. One of such cases includes the death of Tamboran after all its speakers perished in 1815 in a volcanic eruption (Nettle & Romaine 2000). With regard to radical language death some of the speakers of the language get through a devastating event but renounce their language. A good illustration of radical death of language is provided by El Salvador in 1932, when after a peasant revolt Salvadoran soldiers assembled and murdered any person recognised as Indian (Dorian 1981). In order to save their lives, they had to cease speaking their languages out of self-defence. In El Salvador, for instance, many just stopped speaking their mother tongue so as not to be recognised as Indians. As a consequence, the Cacaopera and Lenca languages were relinquished and later on became extinct while Pipil was seriously diminished, with hardly any new speakers after 1932.
In most cases, language death is gradual. This is for the reason that in any given place, at any given time, some children are nonetheless learning the language seen to be dying as their mother tongue. At the same time others are imperfectly learning it and still others do not learn it in any way. Rabin (1986) expounds on the varying characteristics of gradual language death by stating that:
“A language does not cease to be used all at once, but it loses certain territories of use: it might cease to be spoken, but continue to be written, or vice-versa, it might be given up as a language in public and in economic activities but continues to be used at home, etc. It might lose speakers belonging to one social class, but remain alive in others, or its use may shrink in general, but small groups go on using it, sometimes for centuries” (p. 551).
Languages, especially minority languages, may be subject to extensive influence from more acclaimed or more widely used languages spoken close by. Besides learning the local languages considered prestigious, native speakers may find themselves constrained to use their languages in an ever-greater number of contexts. In the end, a time may come when majority of children are no longer learning the endangered language as their mother tongue, or are learning it only imperfectly (Rabin 1986). At this point the language is considered as moribund or dying and the virtually inescapable outcome is that, within one or two generations, nobody will be in a position to speak the threatened language at all. This is language death, and the process which leads to it is language shift.
Apparently, language endangerment is expressed when the nature as well as the structure of language begins to gradually change due its speakers’ loss of original culture as well as the strong influence of another language that is normally dominant (Janse & Tol 2003). Consequently, the number of registers in the language is lessened to simplifications and alterations of its grammar as well as semantic composition of its vocabulary and to the taking over of the structural features and lexical items from the language that is considered more superior. This culminates into a new altered form of the native language which ordinarily mirrors some characteristics of the influencing dominant langua...