Pathways to extinction

Still from ASCII animation "The Death of Natural Language" by Clint Enns (link to gallery).

What is language death? What different pathways to extinction does Grinevald suggest? Which effects does language deterioration have on language structure?

For the purposes of this dissertation a language is considered "dead" when there are no fluent or partially fluent speakers left and the language is not used anymore for any purposes. The following section considers the concepts described by Colette Grinevald Craig in the chapter "Language Contact and Language Deterioration" (Handbook of Sociolinguistics, pp 257-270) and applies them to the situation of Ulster Scots. She notes that from a linguistic perspective, Latin is not really dead but rather it has changed so much that it cannot be called Latin anymore (but Romauntsh, Italian, Spanish, Romanian etc.) Moreover "real" Latin is still used for limited purposes, esp. by the Roman Catholic church. However a lot of native american languages can be considered really dead as they are not spoken anymore by anyone for any purpose and they did not change into a different language.

Grinevald Craig distinguishes a number of different pathways to language extinction, and outlines the following:

1. Sudden death – this only happens if all speakers of a language are annihilated, for instance through genocide or disease. Radical death is similar, except a few speakers are left who opt to shift to the dominant language out of self-preservation
2. Gradual death, or language deterioration – the result of a “long-standing assault” on the language, which has eroded the support from the inside.
   There are two different routes; typical is the “dialectal” route where the language is no longer used for formal functions and so loses its formal registers; its use becomes limited to the home and eventually is no longer transferred between generations as younger community members shift to the dominant prestige language.
   The other route is what I will call the “liturgic” route, where the informal use declines but the formal functions of the language are preserved, such as use in prayers and rituals. The language may eventually die completely if the religion is not practised anymore. Grinevald Craig indicates this route as "Latinate", which may be somewhat confusing as she also uses the example of Latin to illustrate change into a different language (as described above.) Some other examples of the liturgic route would be Old Church Slavonic, Pali in Buddhist scriptures, and Kallawaya in Bolivia. That noted, the liturgic route does often go hand in hand with change into a different language rather than death, but the old language is preserved in certain contexts due to its high prestige. The insistence of some groups on using the King James bible rather than versions in modern English may give some idea of the reason why old languages would be particularly preserved in religious contexts, because the original (or in the case of the King James version of the bible, simply older) phrasing of the texts is considered sacred and unalterable.

The gradual death of a language impacts on all aspects of its structure and usage; step by step the speaker community either imports aspects of a dominant neighbouring language into their own language, or altogether shifts to the dominant language for ever more  purposes. The extent and chronological order of these changes differs per situation, and commonly includes some or all of the following (here outlined briefly because of its relevance. For a full explanation I refer the reader to the chapter by Grinevald Craig.)

• Loss of registers and language forms associated with them. Most commonly this means that a language is no longer used for formal purposes such as scientific, political, or religious speech  or for education (common to the dialectal route described above). The loss of a register takes with it the styles and words specific to the usage, such as specific verb tenses, or more polite sounding words. Alternatively, as in the liturgic route, a language may lose colloquial registers, taking with them informal styles of speech and only leaving for instance ritualistic phrases or prayers.
• Lexical loss. Lexical items that are easily lost include words for things that are not culturally relevant anymore and words that are so similar to those of the dominant language that they effectively merge. Relexification, or the replacement of words from the one (usually minority) language with that of the other (dominant) language, may be both a cause and an effect of lexical loss; because a non-native word is commonly substituted for a native one, the native one is gradually forgotten, thus reinforcing the need to substitute it.
• Loss in phonology. In the contact with other languages certain phonological distinctions may be lost; Grinevald Craig gives the example of contrastive vowel length in Pipil of El Salvador. The language may also gain new phonics which it did not have before e.g. a language in contact with English may start to utilise the approximant /ɹ/ as well as a rolling /r/. 
• Loss in morphology. A deteriorating language may lose such grammatical aspects as appropriate gender and case or lesser-used tense settings. It could be argued that this also happened to English during its contact with French and Scandinavian, as Old English had a much more complicated system of case suffixes for nominals than any modern variant.
• Loss in syntax. A dying language may lose certain syntactic constructions in that something which was once considered correct is not anymore, or if it is still considered correct it may not used as often. This can go hand in hand with morphological loss as a reduction of cases would necessarily make the syntax more rigid to substitute for the loss of grammatical distinction.

Frequently Asked Questions about Ulster Scots

Here's a link to the DCAL FAQ on Irish and Ulster-Scots and the DCAL's position on language diversity. The first set of questions and answers are in English. If you scroll down it turns out that (unexpectedly) there is a whole set of Irish translations of the questions and answers (it would probably be better if they indicated this at the start of the page, but sure.) However there's no such section in Ulster Scots even though this is the government's official page to explain to minority language speakers how to contact the government if they're more comfortable in their own language. How should we interpret that - is it the government's admission that they don't actually think there is anyone who would read such a page? In any case I've found a rich source of information here on the government's official line, so I'll be reading and posting about that this week (tomorrow!)

Impact of language contact on language change

Argument 1: Individual bilingual speakers will transfer aspects from their one language into the other.

 Nancy Rourke: ASL at ease, 2011. Website.

What sort of forces cause language change? Summarise the article by Gregory R. Guy.

How does language change? Gregory R. Guy makes a distinction between three major types of causes. Firstly internal or spontaneous change, such as sound change, semantic broadening, narrowing or pejoration, coinages etc. This would happen even if the speaker community was entirely isolated from other languages.  The other two types both arise when the speaker community is not isolated, but is in contact with other language communities. In borrowing speakers of a given language (L1) import aspects of another language (L2) into their own. Imposition or interference entails that speakers of L1 inadvertently use rules and devices from L1 when speaking L2, thus affecting L2.

For both language contact causes there needs to be some degree of bilingualism of some percentage of the speaker community, here understood to mean that speakers speak at least a bit of more than one language, wether learned as a child or later on in life. In order to import words from another language one needs to have some sense of what they are used for in that language first.

Furthermore in contact situations, the relative size, dominance, prestige and degree of standardisation of the languages that are in contact have a lot of influence on the linguistic outcome. If one language has a much larger speaker community, the changes will take longer to filter through to each speaker, although a local variant can develop that shows a lot of influence from language contact in that locality. For a small community, language innovations can reach all speakers of the language more easily. Moreover the motivation for borrowing is often based on status. Therefore the direction of the borrowing will be mostly from the more prestigious language to the less prestigious one, e.g. from that spoken by the upper or ruling class to that spoken by lower and middle class people. Interference is usually not as conscious of a choice as borrowing, and therefore it is not status based. It occurs often in learning or shift situations, where one community has to adapt to the language of another, and where bilinguals are likely to be fluent in their native language but in the process of learning the language that the imposition happens to. However in cases of coexistence of two languages, or for balanced bilinguals, the interference can go both ways. Both languages will influence one another.

I am making a distinction between the dominance of a language and its prestige, dominance describing the status of the language in terms of being used for official purposes and spoken by people with more power. Prestige on the other hand is the "coolness" factor, which language is in fashion depending on current ideology. Often prestige and dominance go hand in hand, as with French in modern France, but social upheaval can lead to resistance against a dominant language and preference for another, which then gains prestige. Such would have been the case in Norway during the rise of Nynorsk, by way of protest against the Danish influence.

The degree of  standardisation of a language is important because a language for which there are authoritative reference guides for word meanings, spelling, grammar and pronunciation will be much less inclined to change.


How is the situation of Ulster Scots in Guy's terms?

Ulster Scots coexists in Northern Ireland mainly with English and also with Irish, although the communities that speak Ulster Scots and the ones that speak Irish can be expected to be fairly segregated, i.e. bilingual Ulster Scots and Irish speakers will be rare. There is a coexistence situation, that is, Ulster Scots has been spoken alongside of English for centuries and speakers are not coerced to shift. Yet English is clearly the more sizable and dominant of the languages, being spoken worldwide by about 340 million speakers as a native language and another 430 as a second language (Ethnologue: English). According to the Ethnologue there are 90,000 speakers of Scots in the United Kingdom and 10,000 in Ireland (Donegal), and there is no separate entry for Ulster Scots. Both in Ulster and in Scotland the language has been relegated entirely to the informal sphere, whereas English is used for education and all official purposes. Sheila Douglas writes: "Many Scots people are still half-stifled by a social environment that frowns on the use of Scots for anything more important than casual conversation." Of the people in the communities that speak Scots or Ulster Scots, 97% speak English as well (Ethnologue: Scots) which makes them bilingual speakers.

Due to the revivals of the past centuries Scots and Ulster Scots are gaining in prestige again. Children who speak the language in the playground would now not be beaten, although they might still be corrected. Ulster Scots has benefited from the Good Friday Agreement with considerable funding and some governmental endorsement, and it has been promoted as a marker of a distinct identity.


What can we, therefore, expect to find with regards to language change in Ulster Scots?

Since the speaker community of Ulster Scots consists mostly of balanced bilinguals who use Ulster Scots for informal registers (provided the other speaker understands it) and English for more formal ones, it can be expected that there will be a lot of cross-influence from Ulster Scots on the local variety of English and from English on Ulster Scots.  Due to the great intensity of the language contact this influence can be expected to be quite far-reaching, affecting all aspects of Ulster Scots i.e. phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon etc. The influence on English as a whole will be small because of English' giant speaker base, and its high degree of standardisation will mean that the local influence is limited to less formal registers as the standard variety is preferred for the more formal ones.

It may be hard to tell apart the effects of borrowing and intereference. Because the speakers are such balanced bilinguals (fluent in both languages) no useful distinction can be made between their L1 and their L2. The only distinction that is then left between borrowing and interference is whether the innovator made a conscious choice to use a certain aspect from the one language in the other, or whether it was a "mistake". Yet this may show variation on a case by case basis - the one's mistake may be another's conscious choice.

Theory

1. Individual bilingual speakers will transfer aspects from their one language into the other.

2. If a large percentage of a community that speaks a particular language also speaks a particular second language, features of the second language will become a common part of the community's native speech.

3. The overwhelming majority of Ulster Scots speakers are fluent in English as well.

4. Therefore a lot of aspects of English have found their way into Scots.

5. Writing down a mostly oral language creates a reference point for correct use of the language and causes or facilitates standardisation. 

6. When spoken language is written down, changes that have occured in the language will be locked in.

7. Revival authors write down a language that is mostly oral and under threat, often in an attempt to save it from going extinct.

8. Through revival literature the influence of the English language on Ulster Scots becomes standardised.

Proposed research project

Semi-structured interviews with second generation immigrants in their teens and twenties about language innovations and language-related social standing.

Rules of interaction with Mocros: do not imitate them because they will laugh at you. Source: Partyflock.

Why this group?

As second generation immigrants will normally be fairly balanced bilinguals, they are likely to be primary agents of language innovation within their own community and beyond. This makes them an excellent group to test and elaborate on theories of contact-induced language change with, concerning borrowing and interference and the spread of these features throughout the community. Particular types of language innovations are known to be mostly done by teenagers, but an extension of the research could include contrastive interviews with adult members of the same community.

An example of such a group would be children of Morrocan immigrants in the Netherlands. At one hand their use of the Dutch language shows imposition (interference) of their first language, e.g. the application of determiners “deze” and “die” differs significantly from that of non-bilingual Dutch speakers (*wat is deze v. wat is dit; *die meisje vs dat meisje.) At the other hand it can be expected that their use of their first language would include borrowed items from Dutch. The social evaluation of such language innovations may add to or decrease the social standing of those who use them frequently: among second generation Moroccan immigrants a language variety dubbed Mocro has emerged, which has spread to Dutch natives of the same age. Its spread beyond the community indicates that it is seen as "prestigious": whoever speaks it is fairly cool.

Topics to discuss would include:

• To what extent are the interviewees conscious of their own language behaviour?
• Can they give examples of their L1 influencing their L2 and vice versa? How would they explain these language choices?
• Do bilingual speakers within the immigrant community have a better social standing? (This tests a theory posed by Gregory R. Guy (1990:4) that linguistic innovation in language contact situations usually takes place in the “upper stratum of the borrowing group” e.g. the L1 speakers with the highest social standing.)
• How are community members seen that do not make any of the imposition-related language “mistakes”, i.e. who speak the host language fluently? (Following the theory by William Labov that certain language changes are motivated by a sense of solidarity or local prestige, community members who speak the host language fluently can be expected to be regarded
  by other community members as lacking solidarity or as making an attempt to disassociate themselves from the community.)

Choosing a qualitative method rather than a quantitative one will allow for insight into the “why” and “how” of language change rather than just the “if”; through interviews the researcher can explore the deeper motivations of language choices in detail, which would not be possible or at least much harder through questionnaires with Likert-scale questions. The interviewees will benefit from the interviews in that their awareness of their own language behaviour and their own attitudes about social status will increase.