basic word list

[Eduardo Ribeiro]

Dear Mary,

I think that's a fascinating question.  In my experience with
endangered South American languages (Ofayé and the Xambioá dialect of
the Karajá language, for instance), lexical loss is indeed one of the
consequences of language decline, but I don't think that can be
generalized as a diagnostic tool.  In many cases, the exact opposite
happens: the language may disappear as a functioning means of
communication, but all that is left are highly- specialized vocabulary
items, including religious and kinship terms.  In that case, grammar
and phonology would be better diagnostic tools.

The loss of lexical items, even in fields such as kinship terminology,
may be a sign of cultural change, but not necessarily of language
decline.  With numerals, for instance, there is a strong preference,
among Lowland South American languages, to replace higher native
numerals (which tend to be morphologically rather complex) with
simpler, borrowed ones from Spanish and Portuguese.  The native
languages, however, may remain rather vigorous.  In Karajá, even a
rather domestic word such as "father" tends to be replaced by a
Portuguese loan, but there are no signs of language obsolescence.

I guess a possible answer would be that "it depends": which language
is it? does it have a complex, highly developed numeral system, or is
it something more similar to the Lowland South American scenario? are
the grammar and phonology still intact?  are cultural changes, instead
of linguistic ones, to blame? etc.).

Abraços,

Eduardo

-----
Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro
http://wado.us


On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 6:16 PM, Mary Holbrock <maryholbrock at gmail.com> wrote:
> can anyone direct me to what might be considered a basic word list that
> people should know in their native language?  or word categories perhaps? in
> other words, if speakers of a given language no longer know family member
> words or numbers, might the language be considered to be in decline? thanks
> for any help in this area



-- 
----------------
Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro
http://blog.etnolinguistica.org