Dating the final IE unity

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

> At 04:05 AM 1/25/00 -0500, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> And one language does not replace another easily, or without very good
>> reason.  For adults to learn another language is _hard_.

[Stanley Friesen replied]

> Language replacement usually involves a prolonged period of bilingualism.
> With the two languages undergoing various shifts in popularity and prestige
> until eventually one dies out.  Which one is hard to predict, given the
> back-and-forth nature of the dance.

Not necessarily.  Witness what has happened in the Americas, especially in
the western United States.  Until the 1890s, the Native American languages
were spoken predominantly by monolinguals.  Over the next 50 years, the
boarding school system took children away from their parents and made them
speak English exclusively.  After only a century, about half of these
languages are extinct and the great majority of the others are only spoken
by a dozen or so old people, none of whom are monolinguals.  That's not "a
prolonged period of bilingualism" nor is there any "back-and-forth dance".
While Stanley's scenario may be the case in some parts of the world at some
times, it is not the only scenario.

Language use is determined, by and large, by local power.  If it is more
locally advantageous to use Language A rather than Language B, then Language
A will survive and B will dwindle.  As local power changes, B may be
revived.  However, if the relative power of A is much greater than B, B will
simply die.  This is not a recent phenomenon either.  Remember what happened
to the Gaulish, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Punic, and who knows how many
other languages as the Roman Empire grew.  Similar things happened as the
Islamic world expanded and Arabic supplanted local languages.  Even in
ancient times, Aramaic spread with the Neo-Babylonian Empire and replaced
other languages in its path.  In 586 BCE, Hebrew was the native language of
the Jews, but by their return to Palestine just a few decades later, their
native language was Aramaic.  Depending on the relative power of each
language involved, language replacement can happen over centuries or just
decades.  Remember, it only takes one generation that doesn't learn the old
language and the language is doomed.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)