Court rules against Yup'ik as an historically written language ...

[phil cash cash]

It is certainly a complex and terribly interesting case.  But I still believe
that the court based its interpretation on the assumption that in language
there is exists these states:
unwritten > historically unwritten> historically written > written
Such a bias conceptualizes language as if written language were indeed 
language
itself.  Falling along this continuum are the competencies of the speech
communities (e.g. heritage language speakers).  I am thinking that the
interpretation of what a language is follows from this bias--the material
existence of the written form--and this kind of interpretation is some how an
evidential threshold or cause for action. 
This is all just more food for thought here...

Phil
UofA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20080724/08a50b48/attachment.htm>