Full Description
Languages are dying at an alarming rate all over the world. Estimates range from 50% to as much as 90% by the end of the century. This collection of original papers tries to strike a balance between theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches to language death and language maintenance. It provides overviews of language endangerment in Africa, Eurasia, and the Greater Pacific Area. It also presents case studies of endangered languages from various language families. These descriptive case studies not only provide data on the degree of endangerment and the causes of language death, but also provide a general sociolinguistic and typological characterization the language(s) under discussion and the prospects of language maintenance (if any). The volume will be of interest to all those concerned with the ongoing extinction of the world's linguistic diversity.
Contents
1. Preface; 2. Introduction: Language death and language maintenance: Problems and prospects (by Janse, Mark); 3. The endangered languages issue as a hopeless cause (by Newman, Paul); 4. The language situation and language endangerment in the Greater Pacific area (by Wurm, Stephen A.); 5. Language endangerment in Indonesia: The incipient obsolescence and acute death of Teun, Nila and Serua (Central and Southwest Maluku) (by Engelenhoven, Aone van); 6. Sibe: An endangered language (by Stary, Giovanni); 7. The gradual disappearance of a Eurasian language family: The case of Yeniseyan (by Georg, Stefan); 8. The endangered Uralic languages (by Blokland, Rogier); 9. Endangered Turkic languages: The case of Gagauz (by Menz, Astrid); 10. Loss of linguistic diversity in Africa (by Mous, Maarten); 11. Ongota (Birale), a moribund language of Southwest Ethiopia (by Sava, Graziano); 12. An endangered language: The Gurdun language of the Southern Bauchi Area, Nigeria (by Haruna, Andrew); 13. Resian as a minority language (by Steenwijk, Han); 14. Index of languages; 15. Index of names; 16. Index of subjects
