basic word list

[Xavier Barker]

For those interested,

The article i was trying to remember was
"Is phonology going haywire in dying languages? Phonological variations 
in Chipewyan and Sarcee"
Eung-Do Cook
Department of Linguistics, The University of Calgary
ABSTRACT
The two most conspicuous phenomena reported on dying languages are (a) 
structural (and stylistic) simplifications and (b) dramatic increases of 
variability due to incongruent and idiosyncratic “change.” The 
phonological data from two Athapaskan languages, as well as other 
published data (Dorian 1973, 1978; Hill 1978; Schmidt 1985a), 
demonstrate that underlying the apparent degeneration of the system 
there is an orderly progression which is viewed as a retarded process of 
language acquisition. Different semispeakers reach different levels of 
maturity due to different degrees of retardation, consequently 
increasing variability and complexity for the total system, whereas each 
idiolect undergoes systematic developmental stages albeit retarded, 
decreasing eventually structural (and stylistic) profusion. Therefore, a 
dying language mirrors the successive stages of ontogenesis. (Historical 
linguistics, language acquisition, language death, language contact, 
bilingualism, sociolinguistics)

You can get it from JSTOR - which I no longer have access to. I'd be a 
happy recipient of it if anyone has it.

Cheers,
Xavier

>> Hi Mary,
>> I'd agree with Eduardo: in the case of Nauruan, whilst it still enjoys
>> pretty solid intergenerational transmission, much of the kinship terms
>> have disappeared over the last 70 years.  'cousin' has replaced about 6
>> different terms, for example.   In addition, a lot of syntactic loss has
>> happened - the expansion of a couple of once-quite-specific noun
>> classifiers to cover about 25 'lost' classifications comes to mind.
>> Maybe to add confusion, i remember reading an article (which i can't
>> remember) which was trying to flag rapid phonological change as a
>> indicator of endangeredness.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Xavier
>>
>> On 25/05/10 12:08 PM, Eduardo Ribeiro wrote:
>>      
>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>          
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>>      
>
> Dr. Michael Hornsby
> Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures
> Instytut Filologii Angielskiej
> Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza
> Poznań, Poland
>
> http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/fa/hornsby_michael
>
>
>