Endangered Language Communities Research Articles

The dynamics of bilingualism in language shift ecologies

AbstractA large percentage of the world’s languages – anywhere from 50 to 90% – are currently spoken in what we call shift ecologies, situations of unstable bi- or multilingualism where speakers, and in particular younger speakers, do not use their ancestral language but rather speak the majority language. The present paper addresses several interrelated questions with regard to the linguistic effects of bilingualism in such shift ecologies. These language ecologies are dynamic: language choices and preferences change, as do speakers’ proficiency levels. One result is multiple kinds of variation in these endangered language communities. Understanding change and shift requires a methodology for establishing a baseline; descriptive grammars rarely provide information about usage and multilingual language practices. An additional confounder is a range of linguistic variation:regional(dialectal);generational(language-internal change without contact or shift);contact-based(contact with or without shift); andproficiency-based(variation which develops as a result of differing levels of input and usage). Widespread, ongoing language shift today provides opportunities to examine the linguistic changes exhibited by shifting speakers, that is, to zero in on language change and loss in process, rather than as an end product.

Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic

AbstractThis paper considers the typical focus of analysis in a sound change study across generations: the speech community. I argue that changes in social practices across generations may mean that generational comparisons can be problematic, and these issues are particularly pertinent in small and endangered language communities. Using data from Scottish Gaelic (Celtic, ISO = gla), a minority endangered language of Scotland, I exemplify the challenges posed by the speech community construct via an examination of lateral production across generations of speakers. Gaelic traditionally contrasts three phonemic laterals, but analysis shows that this might be changing. There are two possible directions for sound change in the Gaelic lateral system: results show that younger speakers produce some palatalised laterals as palatal glides without laterality. Meanwhile, the remaining laterals are less acoustically distinct among younger generations, suggesting the possibility of future merger. The construct upon which any apparent- or real-time study of sound change relies is the speech community as a unit of analysis for change. While there are differences among the groups of speakers analysed here, I argue it is potentially problematic to consider this to be a form of sound change due to differences in social practices among generations surrounding Gaelic usage and socialisation. Ultimately, I advocate for a socially-informed approach to sound change study which sympathetically takes local social structure into account.

Patterns in the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge: a case study from Arnhem Land, Australia

BackgroundThe loss of traditional ecological knowledge in endangered language communities is a cause of concern worldwide. Given the state of current knowledge, it is difficult to say whether language and TEK transmission levels are correlated, i.e. whether the erosion of one is accompanied by erosion of the other. This case study, focusing on a small Indigenous language from northern Australia, represents a first step towards a systematic investigation of this question.MethodsSpeakers of the language Kune (which is currently being transmitted to small children in the community) were asked to identify and name a number of common birds and plants known to occur on Kune traditional lands, through a series of audiovisual stimuli.ResultsThere was a weak correlation between speaker age and performance for the plant naming task, but not for the birds. Analysis of the ethnotaxa that were or were not named by individual participants showed that only a small number of plants and birds (approx. 13% and 7% respectively) were known to all participants, while many (approx. 30% and 26% respectively) could only be named by one participant, i.e. the oldest. Edible ethnotaxa were common among the plants and birds that could be named by many people. There was a tendency among younger speakers to use a single umbrella term to label similar-looking species from large genera, such as Acacia, whereas older people would have had distinct labels for each species.ConclusionsPerformance in the plant and bird naming tasks was lower than expected for a community where language transmission to younger generations is high. The loss of certain plant and bird names from the active lexicons of some younger Kune speakers may be due to lifestyle change, particularly in terms of food habits, or due to inter-individual differences in life histories. Differences between the transmission of plant and bird names may be due to more frequent interactions with edible plants, as compared to birds.

Framing indigenous language acquisition from within: an experience in learning and teaching the Yaeyaman language

ABSTRACTThis article examines indigenous language acquisition (ILA) with regard to the indigenous Yaeyaman language spoken in the Ryukyus in Japan. The focus is on teachers and new speakers in an endangered language community. The following two questions are examined: (1) What kinds of problems do teachers and learners encounter in language revitalisation of the Yaeyaman language? (2) What kind of teaching practices exist in the Yaeyaman language communities? Using linguistic ethnography within the framework of indigenous research methodology to examine ILA regarding the Yaeyaman language, the paper demonstrates the aspects of inhibition in ILA. I identified four components that impede language learning of new speakers in the community: (1) indigenous teachers' lack of professional self-esteem, (2) lack of awareness of traditional speakers' rich linguistic knowledge, (3) marginalised community-based language policies, and (4) a problematic relation between gender roles and language. I locate these phenomena within the larger issues of ILA theory, also drawing from existing Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories. The paper concludes with proposals for reframing ILA theory to empower the entire target language community by focusing on diversity within indigenous language communities.

The implications of language documentation for an endangered but vibrant language community: a historical perspective

Documentation of an endangered language may be a short project that is carried out with urgency and with primarily academic benefits because the speakers are not passing on the language to others. This paper presents historical perspective on a quite different kind of situation. The documentation of the Seri language has taken place over a considerable period of time and with goals that were primarily community-focused. It documents some of the challenges that have been present during those years and also the benefits of that documentation that are just now beginning to be felt by the speakers of that language.

Keeping Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy, and Revitalization ed. by Mari C. Jones and Sarah Ogilvie, and: Endangered Languages and New Technologies ed. by Mari C. Jones

Reviewed by: Keeping Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy, and Revitalization ed. by Mari C. Jones and Sarah Ogilvie, and: Endangered Languages and New Technologies ed. by Mari C. Jones Claire Bowern Keeping Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy, and Revitalization. Edited by Mari C. Jones and Sarah Ogilvie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xiv + 269. $95.00 (hardcover). Endangered Languages and New Technologies. Edited by Mari C. Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 211. $99.00 (hardcover). Two recent volumes from Cambridge University Press discuss aspects of language endangerment and the documentary record. The eleven contributions to Endangered Languages and New Technologies describe ways in which digital technology (particularly the World Wide Web) can help language documentation and preservation efforts. The sixteen papers in Jones and Ogilvie’s collection, on the other hand, present case studies on documentation, pedagogy, and revitalization of endangered language. Both books have excellent global coverage, with chapters describing languages in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Both include chapters on both signed and spoken languages; the Jones and Ogilvie volume, Keeping Languages Alive, also includes a chapter on a whistled (auxiliary) language. Both books have chapters oriented to endangered language communities, rather than researchers—or directed to both audiences—and taken together, they offer an inspiring snapshot of the many, varied ways in which people across the world are addressing issues of language endangerment. For the contributors to Endangered Languages and New Technologies, “new technologies” mostly involve the Internet and web delivery of content, whether for researchers (as in the chapters by Sjef Barbiers and Dorothee Beermann) or communities and language learners (as in Russell Hugo’s chapter). An exception is the chapter by [End Page 211] Hugh Patterson III on designing keyboard layouts. Others focus on database creation, including linking of underlying data and the creation of data sets that facilitate research on endangered languages. The case studies presented here form a fine cross section of both languages and topics, and I came away from the volume with a renewed appreciation of the richness of the options for endangered language tool kits. Thus, this book will be of interest both for researchers and for community members looking to brainstorm solutions to particular problems. For example, Hugo Patterson III provides a very nice overview of the issues that need to be considered in designing keyboards for typing endangered languages, a crucial extension of the discussion of “orthographies” that linguists may already be familiar with (see also the contributions to Cahill and Rice 2014). In my experience, one of the major factors in orthography development has been ease of typing (for example, the fact that digraphs are preferred over complex glyphs or accents in many “practical” Australian orthographies). The variety of contributions leaves the reader with a good impression of the range of the problems confronting language engineering, particularly for languages with neither large resources nor a big digital footprint. However, I also felt that I was somehow missing the big picture. I wanted someone to draw the individual contributions together, and to give an overview of the challenges and the ways in which researchers and communities are responding; in short, to synthesize the very local discussions into a more general framework. Perhaps that is impossible, given the myriad of communities. The introductory chapter (by Nicholas Ostler) could have provided such an overview, but in fact has a different focus. To be sure, Ostler does address the big picture, inasmuch as he examines how languages across the world are responding to English. He argues that the further development of language technologies will increase accessibility to “the smaller 99 per cent of the world’s languages” (p. 3). He also points out that while English is still an important global lingua franca, the factors that have facilitated English’s worldwide spread have now peaked, and English is not making inroads as a mother tongue in the home, even if it is an important language of wider communication; moreover, “speakers of robust languages have no motive to shift their home use to English just because they may use it for work or leisure” (p. 3). While this may be true as...

Who can speak Lenape in Pennsylvania? Authentication and language learning in an endangered language community of practice

How are new speakers of an endangered language created? In this paper we draw on a three-year ethnographic case study to explore the processes through which a group of learners at a Pennsylvania college came to be identified as speakers of Lenape, a language indigenous to the eastern United States. Using a communities of practice framework, we analyze how language learning was facilitated and how the identities of community members were negotiated and contested through processes of authentication. A community of practice lens affords a useful framework for understanding how this successful learning community functioned, and for identifying factors that may benefit other language revitalization initiatives.

Language Landscape: A digital platform for mapping languages

Abstract Language Landscape (LL) is a non-profit organization set up by a group of postgraduate linguistics students in 2011. It comprises of an interactive online map (languagelandscape.org), which is the main focus of this article, and educational outreach projects. The LL Mapping model relies not on representing languages per se, but rather on using instances of language use as data points. This method can be particularly useful for mapping language variation and multilingualism, especially in urban contexts. Through digitization, LL reaches a wide audience of educators, primary and secondary school students, university students, academic researchers, minority and endangered language communities and finally, social media users.

Gender and endangered languages: Intersections

While studies of the interplay of language use and gendered identity have pointed to the complex interactions between the two, and while researchers have similarly considered the ways in which endangered languages of heritage serve as resources in the construction of identity in communities focused on language revitalization, the intersection of these two fields of study has only rarely been examined. As awareness of the endangered status of many of the world’s languages has grown, the processes by which languages become restricted within their communities of use, and the roles that community members can and do play in reversing that restriction, have been studied and theorized by scholars within the fields of linguistics and anthropology. This collection of papers builds upon and expands the scope of such research by looking at the role that gender plays in both language maintenance and language revitalization processes within communities whose languages are endangered. These papers also explore the impact that language endangerment and revitalization have on the construction of gender, and, indeed, upon the gendered identities available to community members. Through the exploration of processes particular to individual communities, these papers offer a more general understanding of the complex interplay of gendered identity, language use, ideology, and community, thus expanding our understanding of the ways in which gender and language interact, not only in endangered language communities, but more broadly. Gender and Language G&L (PRINT) ISSN 1747–6321 G&L (ONLINE) ISSN 1747–633X

The status of Kumzari and its speakers

The Kumzari language, with approximately 3,000 speakers in the Musandam Governorate of Oman, is an Iranian language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Although Kumzari speakers have lived along the Persian Gulf for hundreds of years, little research has been conducted on this language community. Issues related to constructing a systematic approach for analyzing language minority groups are considered in the context of the Kumzari language and community. In addition, factors and degrees of endangerment suggested in the 2003 UNESCO document entitled “Language Vitality and Endangerment” as well as classifications proposed by other researchers are addressed. Finally, the future status of this endangered language community is discussed.

Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language

In the context of language endangerment and revitalization, many researchers look to the language of traditional speakers as the standard for “authentic” language. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the challenges of researching a traditional variety of an endangered language and of evaluating speaker fluency among native speakers of a language that has manyvarieties and no traditional standard. As shown in this study, speakers display a tendency to assess their own Breton as inferior, uneducated, and imperfect; paradoxically, these same speakers also evaluate literary or academic varieties and the neo-Breton of the school-learned speakers of the language as suspect. The speakers' expressed self-evaluations of fluency demonstrate the problematic nature of identifying an authentic, fluent speaker in a society where, for generations, a language has been alternately ignored and denigrated by the government and the public education system. In exploring these issues, this article sheds light upon the sociolinguistic impact of language contact in endangered language contexts, and the resultant real-world challenges for endangered language communities looking to identify and promote confident speakers, and for researchers relying upon self- and other-reported evaluations of fluent speakerhood.

Media, information technology, and language planning: what can endangered language communities learn from created language communities?

The languages of Klingon and Na'vi, both created for media, are also languages that have garnered much media attention throughout the course of their existence. Speakers of these languages also utilize social media and information technologies, specifically websites, in order to learn the languages and then put them into practice. While teaching a course on ‘Pidgins, Creoles, and Created Languages’, I realized that endangered language communities could learn techniques for interacting with the media from created language communities in order to help further develop the image and prestige planning for their languages. Also, endangered language communities could model the online resources of created language communities part of their acquisition planning. This paper draws on my experiences working with endangered language communities in Canada and Papua New Guinea in order to compare the language planning of these communities to that of Klingon and Na'vi speakers. I also discuss how endangered language communities might benefit from their examples and, finally, what some of the drawbacks to these technological advances may be in terms of language revitalization and maintenance.

The Otoe-Missouria Flag Song

As the title suggests, the focus of this paper is upon a single important song within the OtoeMissouria tribe. This is a preliminary sketch, or a truly working paper as the KU publication series denotes. In subject and approach, it has been inspired by the venerable tradition of collecting, preserving, and analyzing Native American texts begun with 19 th century BAE ethnographers such as James Owen Dorsey, encouraged by Franz Boas and his Americanist students, and celebrated by more recent scholars of verbal art as Hymes, Tedlock, Sherzer, and Basso. The particular esthetic principles used in the text will link it clearly to other tribal songs, and to the performance context as well. I will also raise issues of cultural change and continuity in the context of language shift, and finally, I argue that this Flag Song compellingly demonstrates the value of maintaining a heritage language within endangered and obsolescent language communities. 1

Native American Youth Discourses on Language Shift and Retention: Ideological Cross- currents and Their Implications for Language Planning

This paper examines preliminary findings from an ongoing federally funded study of Native language shift and retention in the US Southwest, focusing on in-depth ethnographic interviews with Navajo youth. We begin with an overview of Native American linguistic ecologies, noting the dynamic, variegated and complex nature of language proficiencies and practices across a continuum of sociocultural settings. We then examine two pairs of youth discourses that illuminate social–psychological and macro-structural influences on language practices. These discourses juxtapose language identity with language endangerment, and language pride with language shame. As such, they expose the ways in which language allegiance is tied to the distribution of power and privilege in the larger society. Youth discourses, we argue, represent a powerful call to action for communities and schools serving Native American students. We conclude with the implications for future research and for language education planning in Indigenous and other endangered-language communities.

Developing Curriculum Materials for Endangered Language Education: Lessons from the Field

With the gloomy prospect of massive language extinction over the next 100 years, efforts by applied linguists, educational anthropologists, and multilingual educators to reverse the trends in language loss are increasing. Education in minority languages seems to be a key to maintaining endangered languages and cultures. One often cited challenge to effecticve minority language education in multilingual settings is the difficulty of developing curriculum and instructional material in many languages. In this paper, current efforts in minority language education are described and patterns analysed. Minority language communities themselves are a major source of what is necessary – but rarely sufficient – educationally. Endangered language communities cannot go it alone. The author suggests several key collaborations between the minority communities and outside organisations and agencies. In addition, a generalised curriculum development resource is suggested as facilitative of community-based education programmes that result in effective, culturally appropriate instruction.

What l Didnt Know About Working in an Endangered Language Community: Some Fieldwork Issues

This paper describes problems andpractices related to the inherent conflict between future-oriented linguistics as scientific research and past-oriented linguistics as language preservation, as relevant tofieldwork in endangered language communities. It focuses on the tension between the past, as embodied in languages that are currently endangered and the cultures that they represent, and the future — what we can and should do, as linguists, scholars, and humans at the dawn of a new Century, in order to continue to learn about linguistic structure and Variation. The concept of preserving a language as a means of giving back t o the Community is examined. Examples from sociolinguistic and descriptive fieldwork research projects (particularly my own experience as a sociolinguist who conducts fieldwork in Faetar, an endangered language, and isproducing a descriptive grammar) are discussed, and the necessity ofdrawing connections between a variety of fields is highlighted.

Training for Fieldwork in Endangered-Language Communities

Fieldwork situations in language-endangered communities are as diverse as the communities and fieldworkers they represent. Conducting fieldwork under different conditions imposes very different requirements. This article addresses these conditions as they affect linguistic anthropologists and other academic professionals working in indigenous North American communities. In particular, I consider: (1) the current movement for language revitalization in Native North American communities; (2) knowledge and skills required of language fieldworkers; and (3) crucial issues of fieldworkers' ethics and responsibility.

“Will the Real Semi-Speaker Please Stand Up?” Language Vitality, Semi-Speakers, and Problems of Enumeration in the Canadian North

This article reassesses categories used in language revitalisation efforts and critiques some enumeration practices that language activists use to measure language endangerment and vitality. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Dene Tha settlement of Chateh in northwestern Alberta, Canada, I argue that the practices of speaker enumeration are often premised on idealised notions of who counts as an endangered language speaker. Standard methods for counting endangered language speakers fail to capture the heterogeneous linguistic practices of partially fluent “semi-speakers,” who often constitute the majority of young speakers in endangered language communities. To correct this oversight, I propose shifting the discourse of language endangerment toward one of language vitality, enabling semi-speakers to be recognised and counted as rightful, valid speakers of endangered languages.