BOOKS ET AL.

ANTHROPOLOGY encountered in the world’s languages. Ura- rina, an Amazonian language spoken by What’s Lost When Languages Are fewer than 3000 people, possesses the excep- tionally rare object-verb-subject word order. Acrisio Pires Click sounds are common only in the Khoisan languages spoken in artly due to a historical development southern Africa. The rapid loss of marked by worldwide colonialism, such diversity substantially hinders Purbanization, and globalization, in the comparative investigation about course of this century humankind is likely to the multiple ways in which a single experience its most extreme cultural loss. As cognitive domain can be organized. K. David Harrison notes in When Languages Linguists are well aware that their Die, “The last speakers of probably half of the efforts alone cannot prevent this world’s languages are alive today.” Their chil- loss. Community involvement, espe- dren or grandchildren are pressured (at times, cially with government support, has by law) to speak only the dominant language proven essential in slowing or even of their community or country. Under one reversing language loss in different estimate, more than 50% of the 6900 or so cases (e.g., Basque and Irish). Cru- languages identifi ed nowadays are expected to cially, endangered languages must become extinct in a matter of a few decades. Still speaking their native tongue. Antonio Con- be acquired by new generations of The precise criteria for what counts as a dori and Illarion Ramos Condori, Kallawaya speakers, with speakers. Here the biological meta- distinct language are controversial—espe- David Harrison in the Bolivian Andes. phor adopted by Harrison applies cially those regarding closely related linguistic appropriately—documentation of systems, which are often inaccurately referred or incomplete acquisition) and at the commu- dead languages is akin to a fossil record, pro- to as dialects of the same language ( 1). The nity level (language death). viding only partial clues about complex cog- problem is complicated by the insuffi ciency of Just as an ecosystem becomes less rich nitive systems. studies about the grammar (formal structure) by the extinction of a species, so too does a Nevertheless, our faculty of language nat- of many of the world’s endangered languages. society with the extinction of a language. Pre- urally gives rise to innovation. As individuals In addition, from a cognitive standpoint any senting many case studies, Harrison (a lin- acquire a language, they are bound to introduce two groups of individuals whose languages are guist at Swarthmore College) argues that the changes into their grammars, thus creating mutually intelligible may in fact have distinct extinction of a community’s language entails new linguistic systems over time ( 3). This is a mental grammars (thus, distinct languages, as major loss of knowledge of its cultural heri- sense in which Latin and the unattested Proto- established for instance on the tage (e.g., history, folklore, Indo-European did not die, but evolved into basis of distinct parameters of literature, and music) and of many new languages. Given such continuous When Languages Die grammatical variation in gen- its understanding of the local innovation, one could ask why the impending erative linguistics). The Extinction of the fl ora, fauna, and ecosystem. disappearance of many languages should be As a cognitive system, a World’s Languages and Still, although these close ties so dire. Several factors make the losses irrepa- language shows dynamic prop- the Erosion of Human do exist, the maintenance of a rable: Current language diversity likely arose erties that cannot exist inde- Knowledge language and of other aspects over tens of thousands of years. Despite the pendently of its speakers. This by K. David Harrison of cultural heritage are not limitations of historical linguistic reconstruc- is the sense in which the Ana- Oxford University Press, always mutually dependent. tion ( 4), with suffi cient data it can provide tolian languages and Dalma- Oxford, 2008. 304 pp. Cultural change can some- important clues about the path of develop- tian are extinct. Therefore, lan- Paper, $17.95, £11.99. times be the best guaran- ment of human groups across the planet (5 ). guage preservation depends on ISBN 9780195372069. tee that a group will be able Lastly, no amount of innovation over time will the maintenance of the native- to maintain its language and exactly restore current language diversity. As speaking human groups. Unfortunately, the even survive. Major world languages (includ- Harrison discusses, it was enabled mainly most accelerated loss of distinct languages ing English, French, Hindi-Urdu, and Span- by the relative or complete isolation among takes place where economic development is ish) achieved dominant status partly because human groups over centuries, circumstances rapid, exacerbating the breakdown of minority of their speakers’ ability to overcome, by that may never occur again. Rich in details yet communities that speak different languages. means of cultural or technological change, surprisingly easy to read, When Languages In this perspective, a language often begins to the challenges and threats from their environ- Die shows what we are losing. die long before the passing of the last speaker: ment, including other peoples. References New generations may start using it only for Linguistic diversity itself may be the 1. M. Erard, Science 324, 332 (2009). limited purposes, increasingly shifting to the worst loss at stake, because it may be the 2. S. Dehaene, V. Izard, E. Spelke, P. Pica, Science 320, community’s dominant language. In this pro- most promising and precise source of evi- 1217 (2008). 3. D. Lightfoot, How New Languages Emerge (Cambridge cess, knowledge of the dying language erodes dence for the range of variation allowed in Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2006). both at the individual level (language attrition the organization of the human cognitive sys- 4. A. Pires, S. G. Thomason, in Principles of Syntactic tem. For instance, Harrison discusses many Reconstruction, G. Ferraresi, M. Goldbach, Eds. strategies for manipulating quantities across (John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2008), pp. 27–72. The reviewer is at the Department of Linguistics, University 5. C. Renfrew, Science 323, 467 (2009). of Michigan, 458 Lorch Hall, 611 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, languages, often endangered ones ( 2). Cer-

CREDIT: COURTESY LIVING TONGUES INSTITUTE FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES COURTESY CREDIT: MI 48109–1220, USA. E-mail: [email protected] tain linguistic phenomena are only rarely 10.1126/science.1163922

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