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Language contact and endangered languages
A major reason for language endangerment is intensive contact with another group whose language has gained, or is gaining, greater political, social and economic prestige and advantages. Speakers of an endangered language will gradually lose the capacity to fully communicate in the language, and fully understand it. As a consequence, an endangered language will gradually become obsolescent. The process of language obsolescence ultimately leads to language shift and language loss. The impact of the increasingly dominant language onto an endangered language tends to involve a massive influx of non-native forms from the dominant language; a high amount of structural diffusion; reinforcement of forms and patterns shared with the dominant language; and the loss of forms or patterns absent from the dominant language. Language endangerment and impending language shift may result in dialect leveling, and creating new mixed, or ?blended? languages. A major difference between contact-induced language change in ?healthy? and in endangered languages lies in the speed of change. A high degree of individual variation between speakers and disintegration of language communities result in the lack of continuity and stability of linguistic change.
History
Editor
Grant APStart Page
241End Page
260Number of Pages
20ISBN-13
9780199945092Publisher
Oxford University PressPlace of Publication
New York, USAFull Text URL
Open Access
- No
Author Research Institute
- Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research
Era Eligible
- Yes