Language death
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, language death (also language extinction or linguistic extinction, and rarely linguicide or glottophagy) is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence
that speakers possess of a given language variety
is decreased, eventually resulting in no native
and/or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialect
s and language
s.
Language death should not be confused with language attrition
(also called language loss) which describes the loss of proficiency in a language at the individual level.
The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language
becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts
allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige. This process is gradual and can occur from either bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom.
Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide
, disease
, or natural disaster
.
A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. Once a language is no longer a native language - that is, if no children are being socialised into it as their primary language - the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generation. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. Typically the transmission of the language from adults to children becomes more and more restricted, to the final setting that adults speaking the language will raise children who never acquire fluency. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language
.
The revival of the Hebrew language
in Israel is the only example of a language which has become a language with new first language
speakers after it became extinct in everyday use for an extended period, being used only as a liturgical
language. And even in the case of Hebrew
, there is a theory that argues that "the Hebrew revivalists who wished to speak pure Hebrew failed. The result is a fascinating and multifaceted Israeli language, which is not only multi-layered but also multi-sourced. The revival of a clinically dead language is unlikely without cross-fertilisation from the revivalists' mother tongue(s)."
Other cases of language revitalization which have seen some degree of success are Irish
, Welsh
, Hawaiian
and to a lesser extent Navajo
, which was used for a WWII radio code never deciphered by the Japanese..
As a response to English linguistic imperialism, de-anglicisation became a matter of national pride in some places and especially in regions that were once under colonial
rule, where vestiges of colonial domination are a sensitive subject. Following centuries of English rule in Ireland and English imposition of the English language, an argument for de-anglicisation was delivered before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892; "When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English." Language was one of the features of Anglicisation in Ireland: although it never died out and became an official language
after independence, Irish had lost its status as the island's principal vernacular to become a minority language during the period of English rule, as is the case in North America where their indigenous languages have been replaced by that of the colonists.
, a linguistic phenomenon analogous to pseudoextinction
. This happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, Old English
may be regarded as a "dead language", with no native speakers, although it has never "died" but instead simply changed and developed into Middle English
, Early Modern English
and Modern English
. The process of language change may also involve the splitting up of a language into a family of several daughter language
s, leaving the common parent language "dead". This has happened to Latin
, which (through Vulgar Latin
) eventually developed into the Romance languages
. Such a process is normally not described as "language death", because it involves an unbroken chain of normal transmission of the language from one generation to the next, with only minute changes at every single point in the chain. There is thus no one point where Latin "died".
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, language death (also language extinction or linguistic extinction, and rarely linguicide or glottophagy) is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence
Linguistic competence
Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language, it is in contrast to the concept of Linguistic performance, the way the language system is used in communication...
that speakers possess of a given language variety
Variety (linguistics)
In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
is decreased, eventually resulting in no native
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
and/or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s and language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s.
Language death should not be confused with language attrition
Language attrition
Language attrition is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language by individuals. Speakers who routinely use more than one language may not use either of their languages in ways which are exactly like that of a monolingual speaker...
(also called language loss) which describes the loss of proficiency in a language at the individual level.
Types of language death
Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:- gradual language death
- bottom-to-top language death: when a language begins to change in a low level place such as the home.
- top-to-bottom language death: when a language begins to change in a high level place such as the government.
- radical language death
- linguicide (a.k.a. sudden language death, language death by genocide, physical language death, biological language death)
The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige. This process is gradual and can occur from either bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom.
Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
, disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
, or natural disaster
Natural disaster
A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...
.
A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. Once a language is no longer a native language - that is, if no children are being socialised into it as their primary language - the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generation. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. Typically the transmission of the language from adults to children becomes more and more restricted, to the final setting that adults speaking the language will raise children who never acquire fluency. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language
Dalmatian language
Dalmatian was a Romance language spoken in the Dalmatia region of Croatia, and as far south as Kotor in Montenegro. The name refers to a pre-Roman tribe of the Illyrian linguistic group, Dalmatae...
.
Consequences on grammar
During language loss—sometimes referred to as obsolescence in the linguistic literature—the language that is being lost generally undergoes changes as speakers make their language more similar to the language that they are shifting to. This process of change has been described by Appel (1983) in two categories, though they are not mutually exclusive. Often speakers replace elements of their own language with something from the language they are shifting toward. Also, if their heritage language has an element that the new language does not, speakers may drop it.- overgeneralization;
- undergeneralization;
- loss of phonological contrasts;
- variability;
- changes in word orderWord orderIn linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
; - morphologicalMorphology (linguistics)In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
loss, such as was seen in Scottish Gaelic in East Sutherland, Scotland (Dorian: 1978) as fluent speakers still used the correct plural formation, whereas semi-speakers used simple suffixation or did not include any plural formation at all; - syntheticSynthetic languageIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
> analytic; - syntactic loss (i.e. lexical categories, complex constructions);
- relexification;
- loss of word-formation productivityProductivity (linguistics)In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is...
; - style loss, such as the loss of ritual speech;
- morphological levelingMorphological levelingIn linguistics, morphological leveling is the generalization of an inflection across a paradigm or between words. For example, the extension of the form is to persons such as I is and they is in some dialects of English is leveling, by analogy with a more frequent form, as is the reanalysis of...
; - analogical leveling.
Language revitalization
Language revitalization is an attempt to slow or reverse language death. Revitalization programs are ongoing in many languages, and have had varying degrees of success.The revival of the Hebrew language
Revival of Hebrew language
The revival of the Hebrew language was a process that took place in Europe and Palestine toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from the sacred languages of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel...
in Israel is the only example of a language which has become a language with new first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
speakers after it became extinct in everyday use for an extended period, being used only as a liturgical
Sacred language
A sacred language, "holy language" , or liturgical language, is a language that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life.-Concept:...
language. And even in the case of Hebrew
Revival of Hebrew language
The revival of the Hebrew language was a process that took place in Europe and Palestine toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from the sacred languages of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel...
, there is a theory that argues that "the Hebrew revivalists who wished to speak pure Hebrew failed. The result is a fascinating and multifaceted Israeli language, which is not only multi-layered but also multi-sourced. The revival of a clinically dead language is unlikely without cross-fertilisation from the revivalists' mother tongue(s)."
Other cases of language revitalization which have seen some degree of success are Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
and to a lesser extent Navajo
Navajo language
Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...
, which was used for a WWII radio code never deciphered by the Japanese..
As a response to English linguistic imperialism, de-anglicisation became a matter of national pride in some places and especially in regions that were once under colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
rule, where vestiges of colonial domination are a sensitive subject. Following centuries of English rule in Ireland and English imposition of the English language, an argument for de-anglicisation was delivered before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892; "When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English." Language was one of the features of Anglicisation in Ireland: although it never died out and became an official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
after independence, Irish had lost its status as the island's principal vernacular to become a minority language during the period of English rule, as is the case in North America where their indigenous languages have been replaced by that of the colonists.
Dead languages and normal language change
Linguists distinguish between language "death" and the process where a language becomes a "dead language" through normal language changeLanguage change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
, a linguistic phenomenon analogous to pseudoextinction
Pseudoextinction
Pseudoextinction of a species occurs where there are no more living members of that species, but members of a daughter species or subspecies remain alive. As all species must have an ancestor of a previous species, much of evolution is believed to occur through pseudoextinction...
. This happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
may be regarded as a "dead language", with no native speakers, although it has never "died" but instead simply changed and developed into Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, Early Modern English
Early Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
and Modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
. The process of language change may also involve the splitting up of a language into a family of several daughter language
Daughter language
In historical linguistics, a daughter language is a language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent.-Examples:*English is a daughter language of Proto-Germanic, which is a daughter language of Proto-Indo-European....
s, leaving the common parent language "dead". This has happened to Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, which (through Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
) eventually developed into the Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
. Such a process is normally not described as "language death", because it involves an unbroken chain of normal transmission of the language from one generation to the next, with only minute changes at every single point in the chain. There is thus no one point where Latin "died".
See also
- Classical languageClassical languageA classical language is a language with a literature that is classical. According to UC Berkeley linguist George L. Hart, it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own, not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich...
- Cultural genocideCultural genocideCultural genocide is a term that lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed in 1933 as a component to genocide. The term was considered in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples juxtaposed next to the term ethnocide, but it was removed in the final document, replaced with...
- Cultural hegemonyCultural hegemonyCultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one social class, by manipulating the societal culture so that its ruling-class worldview is imposed as the societal norm, which then is...
- Endangered languageEndangered languageAn endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
- Ethnocide
- Extinct languageExtinct languageAn extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
- International LanguageInternational languageInternational language may refer to:* Love* Music* Mathematics* International auxiliary language - a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- Language policyLanguage policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Language revitalization
- Language shiftLanguage shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
- Last speaker of languageLast speaker of languageAny language is determined to be an extinct language when the last native or fluent speaker of that language dies.There are some 500 languages out of a total of 6000 being classified as nearly extinct because "only a few elderly speakers are still living"....
- Linguistic imperialismLinguistic imperialismLinguistic imperialism, or language imperialism, is a linguistics concept that "involves the transfer of a dominant language to other people...
- Linguistic purismLinguistic purismLinguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
- Linguistic rightsLinguistic rightsLinguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere...
- The LinguistsThe LinguistsThe Linguists is an independent 2008 American documentary film produced by Ironbound Films about language extinction and language documentation...
(documentary film) - Minority languageMinority languageA minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...
- Regional languageRegional languageA regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
- Rosetta ProjectRosetta ProjectThe Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone to last from 2000 to 12,000 AD; it is run by the Long Now Foundation. Its goal is a meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,500...
Further reading
- Abley, Mark. (2003). Spoken here: Travels among threatened languages. London: Heinemann.
- Aitchinson, Jean. (1991). Language change: progress or decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bastardas-Boada, Albert (2007). "Linguistic sustainabiliy for a multilingual humanity", Glossa. An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, num. 2.
- Batibo, Herman M. (2005). Language decline and death in Africa: Causes, consequences, and challenges. Multilingual Matters.
- Brenzinger, Matthias (Ed.). (1992). Language death: Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Brenzinger, Matthais (Ed.). (1998). Endangered languages in Africa. Cologne: Rüdiger Köper Verlag.
- Broderick, George. (1999). Language Death in the Isle of Man. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ISBN 3484303956.
- Calvet, Louis-Jean. (1998). Language wars and linguistic politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Campbell, Lyle. (1994). Language death. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 1960–1968). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
- Campbell, Lyle; & Muntzel, M. (1989). The structural consequences of language death. In N. C. Dorian (Ed.).
- Cantoni-Harvey, Gina (Ed.). (1997). Stabilizing indigenous languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University, Center for Excellence in Education.
- Crystal, David. (2000). Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65321-5.
- Crystal, David. (2004). Language revolution. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Cyr, Christine. (2008). "How Do You Learn a Dead Language?". Slate.
- Dalby, Andrew. (2003). Language in danger: The loss of linguistic diversity and the threat to our future. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12900-9.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1997). The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Dorian, Nancy C.Nancy DorianNancy C. Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the death of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo....
(1973). Grammatical change in a dying dialect. Language, 49, 413-438. - Dorian, Nancy C. (1978). Fate of morphological complexity in language death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic. Language, 54 (3), 590-609.
- Dorian, Nancy C. (1981). Language death: The life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Dorian, Nancy C. (Ed.). (1989). Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death. Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language (No. 7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32405-X.
- Dressler, Wolfgand & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (eds.) (1977) Language death (International Journal of the Sociology of Language vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
- Dressler, Wolfgand U.; & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (Eds.). (1977). Language death. International Journal of the Sociology of Language (Vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
- Fishman, Joshua A.Joshua FishmanJoshua Aaron Fishman, is an American linguist who specializes in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.-Life:...
(1991). Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. - Grenoble, Lenore A.; & Whaley, Lindsay J. (Eds.). (1998). Endangered languages: Current issues and future prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hagège, Claude. (1992). Le souffle de la langue. Paris: Odile Jacob.
- Hagège, Claude. (2000). Halte à la mort des langues. Paris: Editions Odille Jacob.
- Hale, Ken; Krauss, Michael; Watahomigie, Lucille J.; Yamamoto, Akira Y.; Craig, Colette; Jeanne, LaVerne M. et al. (1992). Endangered languages. Language, 68 (1), 1-42.
- Harmon, David. (2002). In light of our differences: How diversity in nature and culture makes us human. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-518192-1.
- Hazaël-Massieux, Marie-Christine. (1999). Les créoles: L'indispensable survie. Paris: Editions Entente.
- Hill, Jane. (1983). Language death in Uto-Aztecan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49, 258-27.
- Janse, Mark; & Tol, Sijmen (Eds.). (2003). Language death and language maintenance: Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. ISBN 90-272-4752-8; ISBN 1-58811-382-5.
- Joseph, Brian D. (Ed.). (2003). When languages collide: Perspectives on language conflict, language competition, and language coexistence. Columbus: Ohio State University.
- Maffi, Lusia (Ed.). (2001). On biocultural diversity: Linking language, knowledge, and the environment. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- Maurais, Jacques; & Morris, Michael A. (Eds.). (2003). Languages in a globalizing world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Mohan, Peggy; & Zador, Paul. (1986). Discontinuity in a life cycle: The death of Trinidad Bhojpuri. Language, 62 (2), 291-319.
- Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Mühlhäusler, Peter. (1996). Linguistic ecology: Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region. London: Routledge.
- Nettle, Daniel; & Romaine, Suzanne. (2000). Vanishing voices: The extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513624-1.
- Phillipson, Robert. (2003). English only?: Challenging language policy. London: Routledge.
- Reyhner, Jon (Ed.). (1999). Revitalizing indigenous languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University, Center for Excellence in Education. ISBN 0-9670554-0-7.
- Robins, R. H.; & Uhlenbeck, E. M. (1991). Endangered languages. Oxford: Berg.
- Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. (1990). Theory of language death, and, language decay and contact-induced change: Similarities and differences. Arbeitspapier (No. 12). Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln.
- Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. (1992). Theory of language death. In M. Brenzinger (Ed.) (pp. 7–30).
- Schilling-Estes, Natalie; & Wolfram, Walt. (1999). Alternative models of dialect death: Dissipation vs. concentration. Language, 75 (3), 486-521.
- Skutnab-Kangas, Tove. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education—or world-wide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Slater, Julia. (2010). "Time Takes Its Toll on Old Swiss Language" SwissInfo.ch.
- de Swaan, Abram. (2001). Words of the world: The global language system. Cambeidge, UK: Polity Press.
- Thomason, Sarah G. (2001). Language contact: An introduction. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
External links
- Lost Tongues and the Politics of Language Endangerment
- Languages don't kill languages; speakers do
- Language endangerment: What have pride & prestige got to do with It? (pdf)
- Language birth & death (pdf)
- Globalization & the Myth of Killer Languages: What’s Really Going on? (pdf)
- Wall Street Journal on language death
- http://www.linguistic-rights.org/en/—International Symposium on "Linguistic Rights in the World: The current situation", United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, GenevaGenevaGeneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, 24 April 2008