Small-Language Fates and Prospects Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture Series Editors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) R.M.W. Dixon (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) N.J. Enfield (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen) VOLUME 6 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bslc Small-Language Fates and Prospects Lessons of Persistence and Change from Endangered Languages Collected Essays By Nancy C. Dorian LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Looking to Achiltibuie from Polbain pier, Coigach, Wester Ross, Scotland. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dorian, Nancy C. Small-language fates and prospects : lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages : collected essays / By Nancy C. Dorian. pages cm. — (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture ; 6) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-23051-4 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26193-8 (e-book) 1. Endangered languages. 2. Scottish Gaelic language—Dialects—Scotland. I. Title. P40.5.E532S36 2014 491.6’3—dc23 2014002474 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn ����-���� isbn ��� �� �� ����� � (hardback) isbn ��� �� �� ����� � (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. 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A hundred thousand thanks! ∵ Contents Foreword ix Sources xi Introduction 1 part 1 Language Change in an Obsolescent Language 31 1 Grammatical Change in a Dying Dialect (1973) 33 2 The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Scottish Gaelic Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic (1978) 66 3 Making do with Less: Some Surprises along the Language Death Proficiency Continuum (1986) 93 4 Negative Borrowing in an Indigenous Language Shift to the Dominant National Language (2006) 115 part 2 Speaker Skills and the Speech Community in a Receding Language Context 135 5 The Problem of the Semi-Speaker in Language Death (1977) 137 6 Language Shift in Community and Individual: The Phenomenon of the Laggard Semi-Speaker (1980) 146 7 Defining the Speech Community to Include its Working Margins (1982) 156 8 Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families? (1986) 167 9 Age and Speaker Skills in Receding Language Communities: How Far do Community Evaluations and Linguists’ Evaluations Agree? (2009) 178 10 Linguistic Lag as an Ethnic Marker (1980) 193 viii contents part 3 Language Shift and Language Maintenance 203 11 Language Loss and Maintenance in Language Contact Situations (1982) 205 12 The Value of Language-Maintenance Efforts which are Unlikely to Succeed (1987) 223 13 The Ambiguous Arithmetic of Language Maintenance and Revitalization (2011) 234 14 Purism vs. Compromise in Language Revitalization and Language Revival (1994) 247 15 Western Language Ideologies and Small-Language Prospects (1998) 264 16 Bi- and Multilingualism in Minority and Endangered Languages (2004) 284 part 4 Language Use 309 17 Stylistic Variation in a Language Restricted to Private-Sphere Use (1994) 311 18 Telling the Monolinguals from the Bilinguals: Unrealistic Code Choices in Direct Quotations within Scottish Gaelic Narratives (1997) 329 19 Celebrations: In Praise of the Particular Voices of Languages at Risk (1999) 347 part 5 Fieldwork: Methods, Problems, Insights 369 20 Gathering Language Data in Terminal Speech Communities (1986) 371 21 Surprises in Sutherland: Linguistic Variability amidst Social Uniformity (2001) 391 22 Documentation and Responsibility (2010) 409 23 The Private and the Public in Language Documentation and Revitalization (2010) 425 Author Index 445 General Index 449 Foreword Nancy Dorian is a star. She is the founder of at least one burgeoning field within lin- guistics. She has made a lasting impact on a language community, and has published much of lasting value on many topics to do with the fate of endangered languages and language shift, and on what can be done about this. Language endangerment, language obsolescence, shift and loss are among the most prominent concerns of today’s linguistics, especially sociolinguistics. Nancy Dorian put them on the map. Her book Language death: the life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981) was the first systematic investigation of a lan- guage on the way out – including intergenerational variation between speakers, their insecurity, loss of proficiency, and the irreversible changes under the influence of the majority language (English). This book became an instant classic, and so did Nancy Dorian. Investigating obsolescence: studies in language contraction and death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), edited by Nancy Dorian, opened com- pletely new perspectives on how languages may retreat, and contract, as they gradually fall into disuse. Nancy Dorian has had an outstanding career in linguistics. She has published many books, and several score articles – all of them highly influential, and much quoted. She has done an immense amount for the Scottish Gaelic community she has been work- ing with – helping maintain the language, and understand the why and the how of its dynamics. In 2012, Nancy was the recipient of the prestigious Kenneth Hale award, by the Linguistic Society of America, for her research on Scots Gaelic ‘that spans a period of almost fifty years, perhaps the most sustained record of research on any endangered language, and for her effective advocacy for the cause of endangered language preser- vation and revitalization’. Nancy Dorian’s voice in support of minority and endangered languages was one of the earliest, and continues to be one of the most prominent. Nancy’s illustrious career has in many ways shaped the profile of modern linguistics in the true sense. As the editor of the section on ‘Small languages and small language communities’ of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Nancy Dorian helped so many scholars and fieldworkers to openly talk about the issues faced by the communities they work in. Through her inspiring work, and her warm and engaging personality, Nancy Dorian managed to bring together scholars from different parts of the world, getting them to make joint discoveries and work on similar topics, making their research richer and more interesting. Nancy Dorian has served as a source of inspiration, and as an informal mentor to many – including us. To have a special volume of Nancy Dorian’s papers – many of them classics, but not all of them easy to locate – has been something we have always wished for. This vol- ume is it. Here we have twenty three papers, and an introduction, by Nancy, which x foreword brings them all together, as the culmination of her life’s work. Each of these is a para- mount achievement in the areas of endangered languages, language variation, lan- guage shift and maintenance, and the methodology and practice of linguistic fieldwork. It is plainly an honour for us to have this volume within our monograph series. Few if any linguists have displayed such insight, and brilliance as Nancy Dorian. She remains an admirable role model, and the source of motivation and encouragement for all real linguists. Colleagues like Nancy make our discipline worthwhile. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald R.M.W. Dixon N.J. Enfield Sources Chapters 1–23 have been previously published. The current versions have undergone varying amounts of revision. Chapter 1, ‘Grammatical Change in a Dying Dialect’ was published in Language 49, 2: 413–438, 1973, used with permission. Chapter 2, ‘The Fate of Morphological Complexity in Scottish Gaelic Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic’ was published in Language 54, 3: 590–609, 1978, used with permission. Chapter 3, ‘Making do with Less: Some Surprises along the Language Death Proficiency Continuum’ was published in Applied Psycholinguistics 7: 257–276, 1986, used with permission. Chapter 4, ‘Negative Borrowing in an Indigenous Language Shift to the Dominant National Language’ was published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9, 5: 557–577, 2006, used with permission. Chapter 5, ‘The Problem of the Semi-Speaker in Language Death’ was published in the International Journal