LINGUIST List 26.1298
Mon Mar 09 2015
Review: Lang Acq; Lang Doc; Socioling: Dorian (2014)
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <saralinguistlist.org>
Date: 28-Oct-2014
From: Jean-François Mondon <jfmondon
gmail.com>
Subject: Small-Language Fates and Prospects
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AUTHOR: Nancy Dorian
TITLE: Small-Language Fates and Prospects
SUBTITLE: Lessons of Persistence and Change from Endangered Languages: Collected Essays
SERIES TITLE: Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2014
REVIEWER: Jean-François R. Mondon, Minot State University
Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry
INTRODUCTION
Small-Language Fates and Prospects: Lessons of Persistence and Change from Endangered Languages is a volume of collected essays from 40 years of Nancy Dorian’s research. The book is divided into five parts with a 29 page introduction by Dorian. It is rounded out with an author index and a general index. Because of space limitations only a few articles will be discussed at any length below.
SUMMARY
Introduction
The introduction (pp. 1-29) presents a rich overview of the growth and development of field linguistics over the past fifty years, with a focus on issues particularly pertinent to the recording of endangered languages. Dorian touches on questions such as what determines when a language is dead, whether the notion of language death has negative side-effects on the community being studied, what role if any can imperfect speakers play in both language revitalization and in acquiring data on the language itself, and how the linguist’s search for idealized paradigms might affect research. Throughout, Dorian sprinkles the narrative with experience from her decades-long research on the Scottish-Gaelic spoken in three fishing communities: Embo, Brora, and Golspie.
Part 1: Language Change in an Obsolescent Language
This section consists of four articles. Unless otherwise indicated below, each study deals with the Scottish-Gaelic of East Sutherland.
“Grammatical Change in a Dying Dialect” (1973) studies the variability or lack thereof of initial consonant mutations (i.e. lenition, nasalization, deletion). Surprisingly, the verbal system appears to show no variation in initial mutations, with lenition occurring consistently in the preterite and conditional and nasalization after certain conjunctions. Dorian proposes that since Gaelic lacks equivalents of yes/no, repeating the verb of the question instead, children from a young age are “confronted with the necessity of handling the full verbal apparatus.” Additionally, certain high-frequency morphemes show obligatory lenition and are not variable despite the fact that the lenition has a low functional load in these instances since the adverbial morphemes triggering the lenition are never themselves deleted.
Two instances where there is variation, however, are the mutations triggered by possessive pronouns and nouns after the article. Possessive pronouns, aside from the 1st and 2nd sg. are generally confined to a passive construction in Gaelic, involving a form of the verb dol ‘get’ or bith ‘be’ followed by the possessive adjective and a verbal noun. The two passive constructions crucially differ in that the formation with bith is accompanied by a subject pronoun with which the possessive adjective agrees. It is in this construction that the mutations are variable. The mutations really carry a low functional load since, even in those instances where the possessive itself may be deleted leaving behind its mutation, the continued presence of the subject pronoun helps to avoid any ambiguity. For the youngest speakers from Embo, the dol passive has been influenced by the bith passive, as attested by the infiltration of subject pronouns into this construction as well and the concomitant confusion of mutation on the verbal noun.
With respect to nouns, the definite article lenites all feminine nouns in all three cases (nominative/accusative, dative, genitive) as well as masculine nouns except in the nominative singular of masculines where nasalization is expected. In such a situation where lenition occurs in 5 of 6 paradigmatic slots one would expect lenition to spread to the masculine nominative as well. Surprisingly, it is nasalization which is spreading throughout the masculine paradigm. This seems to be a result of the rare use of the genitive and dative. Again, variability of mutation is confined to an area where it does not bear any substantial functional load, if any.
The second article in this section, “The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Scottish Gaelic Language Death” (1978) studies how semi-speakers (SS) handle two morphological categories with rich inflectional choices: noun plurals and gerund formation. Dorian found that as opposed the language simplification found in pidgin/creolization situations, the language of SS still shows a great deal of complexity. The SS are moving towards simplification, using simple suffixation far more frequently than older speakers and reducing the use of other types of morphological expression such as vowel mutation and subtraction. Nonetheless, traces of these more complex patterns exist in the speech of the SS. Dorian concludes that this striking difference from pidgins and creoles is curious enough to treat language death as a separate process, requiring its own intensive study. She concludes by hypothesizing that in East Sutherland Gaelic the strong inter-generational ties she documented or the protracted length of its obsolescence, factors which are not shared with pidginization scenarios, may have impeded total loss of forms.
Part 2: Speaker Skills and the Speech Community in a Receding Language Context
The section contains six articles.
In “The Problem of the Semi-Speaker in Language Death” (1977) Dorian explores whether linguists, when dealing with terminal languages, can reasonably identify a speaker as being a semi-speaker. This is particularly important for those languages for which there are very few speakers left. She concludes that while more research is needed, a linguist can reasonably ascertain the intactness of the version of a language which s/he derives from a final few speakers. Often the manner and/or coherence of the data produced by a speaker can identify him/her as a semi-speaker. If s/he is also the last speaker, oddities in the structure of the language may indicate an archaism which could reflect an earlier more productive norm. An example is the survival of the nasal mutation in one informant only in the word ‘house’. Finally, from her study it appears that more proficient speakers can accurately identify semi-speakers. This last point is strikingly true in the case of two siblings, one of whom was held by the community to speak better Gaelic than his sister. Dorian’s data shows that this indeed was true, with the sister analogically levelling far more than her brother in the case of noun plurals, and uniquely in verb stems, the 1st sg. conditional, and the 1st sg. future.
“Language Shift in Community and Individual: The Phenomenon of the Laggard Semi-Speaker” (1980) investigates those speakers who exhibit resistance to language shift. She interviewed speakers of East Sutherland Gaelic as well as Pennsylvania Dutch and observed that when two of the following three realities exists, the likelihood rises that an individual will avoid abandoning a language: i) cross generational linguistic socialization outside the nuclear family (such as with an aunt or more usually a grand-parent), ii) a highly valued sense of community identity, and iii) a penchant for inquiry and conversation.
“Defining the Speech Community to Include its Working Margins” (1982) discusses various views on what defines a speech community. She rejects the definitions of Gumperz (1971) and Labov (1972) since the former is completely delimited by verbal behavior and the latter emphasizes shared evaluations of patterns of usage. Neither, as exemplified by Dorian’s research on East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG), would include semi-speakers. Their ability to take partin a conversation is not hindered by their hesitation to produce grammatical Scots-Gaelic. Rather, their comprehension of fluent Gaelic speech and their ability to integrate comments that are semantically relevant to a topic at hand indicate that they should be considered part of the speech community, even if not fluent. She sides with Hymes’ (1974) definition of a speech community that highlights the social group and not the language, while taking into account ‘the entire organization of linguistic means within it.’ This more encompassing definition rightly includes semi-speakers.
In “Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families?” (1986) Dorian presents a study comparing the abilities of siblings in a dying language. Her data come from ESG and Pennsylvania Dutch, though primarily the former. In both instances the large families studied had an acknowledged and perspicuous break between those children who commanded the language and those who did not. In the case of the ESG family the parents did not make a conscious decision not to teach their children Gaelic whereas in the Pennsylvania Dutch family the parents did make such a negative decision. What is striking, however, is that the same clear delineation between older siblings and younger siblings is observed. The latter are either passive bilinguals or semi-speakers with far more analogical levelling in various morphological contexts than their older siblings. What causes this abrupt change within a family? Dorian contends that it is a longer gestation period in which negative pressures from the outside have crept into the language community. An apparent counterexample is Zapotec in Mexico, in which monolingual speakers survived for centuries despite the presence of Spanish (Hinojosa 1980). However, this changed very quickly under pressure of the economic advantages offered by speaking English. As Dorian points out, negative pressures and feelings toward indigenous languages had been growing for centuries in Mexico too (Heath 1972).
“Age and Speaker Skills in Receding Language Communities: How Far do Community Evaluations and Linguists’ Evaluations Agree?” (2009) reviews work on Tariana, spoken in the Northwest Amazon, and Menomini in Wisconsin which indicates that age and proficiency level in a dying language are not a perfect match. Her own work on ESG fields the same scenario. Seònaid, an older speaker, was fluent in the language but showed surprisingly low retention of some structures which contemporaries maintained. The same goes for a young fluent speaker, Rory, with respect to his own age cohort. What is interesting, however, is that both were considered fluent speakers by the community. It appears, thus, that for communities other issues besides age and grammatical mastery of the language determine who is considered fluent. With respect to Seònaid, her reputation of being a store of knowledge on cultural matters such as proverbs and kin-names and her gifted skills as an anecdotalist seem to have left little doubt in the community’s mind that she was a fluent speaker. With respect to Rory it appears that his palpable language loyalty for Gaelic, as exemplified by his readily conversing in Gaelic when given the chance, established him as a fluent speaker.
“Linguistic Lag as an Ethnic Marker” (1980) evaluates the concept of language as an ethnic marker. Dorian argues that this concept should be broadened to linguistic behavior and not confined to a particular language or dialect. She demonstrates that such a reconceptualization would allow for linguistic lag to serve as an ethnic marker. She defines linguistic lag as “a persistent lag in linguistic habits as compared with the linguistic habits of neighboring groups.” Linguistic lag has been a marker of the fisherfolk of East Sutherland for generations. In the late 18th and early 19th century the population was known for an unusually pure Gaelic, free of English borrowings. Subsequently they were pegged for their peculiar monolingualism. After that, their imperfect mastery of English marked them as different. Finally, their persistent bilingualism in a monolingual society is out of the norm.
Part 3: Language Shift and Language Maintenance
The third section consists of six articles, which delve into aspects of language maintenance.
While it is easy to get disappointed by the failed efforts at language maintenance, there are several positives coming from such movements, as pointed out in “The Value of Language-Maintenance Efforts which are Unlikely to Succeed” (1987). The most important, for instance, involve dispensing with generation-long negative feelings towards the endangered language, reintroducing cultural history and heritage, and increasing the accessibility of language-learning materials for those inclined to study the language.
In “Western Language Ideologies and Small-Language Prospects” (1998) Dorian tackles the issue of different worldviews on multilingualism, focusing primarily on Western notions that multilingualism is effectively bad. She points out that many people develop negative opinions of minority languages, erroneously correlating adaptive and expressive capacity with survival and spread–effectively presuming a survival of the fittest amongst languages. This, however, is simply false. Languages do not have an inherent ability to thrive or not. Rather, any history textbook will show that languages rise and fall with the political fortunes of the people that speak them. Sumerian and Akkadian, for instance, were quite strong for centuries before they were replaced by Greek, not because Greek was inherently more fitted for communication, but because its speakers were more powerful. This Western viewpoint, however, is contrasted with several non-Western viewpoints which prize multilingualism, such as that of the Arizona Tewa. Other factors can fight this prevalent Western notion, such as the push for political autonomy (e.g. the rise of Greenlandic) and the valuation of a culture (Echota Cherokee and Welsh). The immediately following article, “Bi- and Multilingualism in Minority and Endangered Languages” (2004) reinforces the point.
Part 4: Language Use
This section contains three articles, only one of which will be discussed below.
“Celebrations: In Praise of the Particular Voices of Languages at Risk (1999)” emphasizes that languages possess their own unique constructions which often cannot be translated or only at the cost of sounding unnatural. One such case from ESG is an emphatic clitic which can be attached to pronouns, certain verbs, conjugated prepositions, and nouns or adjectives when either is final in a possessive phrase. By citing actual examples from her recordings, Dorian shows that this suffix is used to highlight a contrast or express astonishment. Attempting to replicate this in English via pitch or intonation is simply impossible when the ESG suffix is used multiple times in a sentence, since the resulting English would sound quite odd.
Part 5: Fieldwork: Methods, Problems, Insights
This final section contains four articles, of which I will discuss two.
“Gathering Language Data in Terminal Speech Communities” (1986) discusses issues common to most situations of recording a receding language, from verifying the extent of a speaker’s knowledge, to dealing with negative attitudes towards the language both from outside and inside the speech community, and even to the pluses and minuses of solo and group interviews. This article is reinforced by “Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic Variability amidst Social Uniformity” (2001) which is a neat autobiographical sketch of Dorian offering personal and useful information for would-be linguistic fieldworkers. Her discovery of unexpected variation, not conditioned by socioeconomic factors in an area which was homogenous along that scale, shaped part of her subsequent research.
“Documentation and Responsibility” (2010) offers interesting insight into the unexpected ethical issues which may arise in fieldwork. Dorian includes issues from her own experience, e.g., whether to include in a historical archive certain recordings which included personal information about the speakers , and how later generations have romanticized the East Sutherland fisherfolk lifestyles and language of a bygone era.
EVALUATION
This book is essential reading for all students or researchers who deal with dying languages at any linguistic level, bilingualism, code-switching, field work, language policy, and variation and change. Many of the 23 articles in this volume have shaped these various fields and it is very sensible to have them in one location. All of Dorian’s most important articles, save perhaps her 1994 article in Language, appear in this volume, and I assume it was left out due to its size. Marred by only a handful of typos, the book has much to recommend it. The layout of the book is straight-forward and clear and its copious index is appreciated. One editorial decision which is especially welcome is a bibliography after each article rather than a single larger one at the end of the book. This allows for an easier perusal of what were the foundational and contemporary sources for each particular article in the volume.
REFERENCES
Dorian, Nancy. 1994. “Varieties of variation in a very small place: Social homogeneity,prestige norms, and linguistic variation.” Language 70: 631-96.
Gumperz, John. 1971. “The speech community,” reprinted in Anwar S. Dil, ed., Language in social groups: Essays by John J. Gumperz, 114-28. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1972. Telling tongues: Language policy in Mexico, colony to nation. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Hinojosa, Maria de la Paz. 1980. “The collapse of the Zapotec vowel system,” Penn Review of Linguistics 4:28-39.
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Assistant Professor or Foreign Languages at Minot State University, whose research deals with the writing of pedagogical material for various languages (Classical Armenian, Latin) and fieldwork on Breton.
Page Updated: 09-Mar-2015