'Status' drives extinction of languages

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

Nicholas Ostler's answer shows (as one might expect) that this issue is
just so much more complicated than the model summarised in the article
we were responding to could cope with.

There are problems with the definition of 'extinct' and I tried to make
the definition as powerful as possible -- I agree that 'severe decline'
should count as evidence.

The counter examples:
> In all these cases, it seems that sheer numbers could make 
> ruling elites in large empires change their language - 
> perhaps because it became impractical to restrict 
> communication just to members of the elite.

Yes. And this brings up the definition of 'status'. Because status can
be conferred by association with a small ruling group, or by sheer
volume. Sheer numbers (Manchu in China, French in medieval England) can
mean that a language spoken by a small group of rulers can be swamped by
a subject people. Size is also status. There might be other things that
confer status. The 'caste system' model of language status such that
languages are linked to groups ranged on a hierarchy of prestige is not
the only one there is. Seems to me status can be of many sorts.

But the case of Latin illustrates a different issue, related to the
difference between oral and written language. If a Standard dialect of a
language is used over a long period of time and if that Standard is
maintained in writing and very formal speech in a (possibly leaky)
diglossic situation such that no-one speaks a variety that could
reasonably be described as that Standard Dialect as a native language,
then you get a situation where the older Standard (we could call it the
Classical Language) is identified as a language separate from the
vernaculars that have descended from it. At one point these vernaculars
might be referred to as (bad) Latin but, as we know, at various points
they develop their own Standard written dialect, which is closer to the
spoken form at first, and then in turn becomes a conservative form
distant from speech (native speakers of French have to learn how to
write those inflections that are no longer distinguished in speech, for
example). Part of what is going on here is the conservatism of the
written language. Written standards can persist over centuries -- look
at Chinese, but also at English, still using a Standard form close to
the one emerging over the fourteenth century and pretty well identical
to the one used by the mid seventeenth century. In both modern Chinese
(and by that I do not mean Mandarin, but written 'Chinese') and modern
English, differences between dialects are disguised by a common written
Standard, not only in pronunciation (the biggest area of difference) but
also in grammar, due to the separate, formally taught, and enforced
grammmars for the written language.

It therefore does not seem to me to make sense to say that Latin, or Old
English, is extinct. These are languages that have, as is inevitable,
changed over time, and where there have been discontinuities in the form
of the written standard. But the earlier forms of the languages have
been transmitted down the generations, and any identification of them as
separate language is the result of the (chance) survival of texts
written long ago and, in the case of Latin, in the persistence of the
earlier Standard dialect for so long that it was identified as a
separate language.

Anthea
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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
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