language loss and climate change

[Bill Palmer]

Dear Nigel

I am not aware of any specific literature on this topic but I wanted to follow up Jorge's email. Halia is spoken by a large community on mainland Buka (essentially part of Bougainville). However, a small community speaking a distinct dialect of Halia occupied an atoll called Tulun (with various bother names in some of the literature). The PNG government decided to relocate the inhabitants to mainland Buka due to the islands of the atoll becoming problematic for habitation, a major issue being storm surges. The community were resettled among the considerably more numerous speakers of other Halia dialects on Buka. This could be predicted with a considerable degree of confidence to result in loss of the Tulun dialect, as the children of relocated Tulun speakers are likely to acquire the dominate Hanahan dialect. However, a few Tulun speakers have since decided to return to Tulun to live, at least part time. Nonetheless, the small numbers and the increasingly untenable nature of the atoll for habitation means the Tulun dialect will probably disappear within a generation. I have had a PhD student do some work with Tulun speakers, and the above information is based on his findings.

I am particularly interested in atoll-based languages for a number of reasons, and currently have a major project on spatial language in atoll-based communities, with PhD students working the Marshall Islands and the Maldives. The urgency of the project (and part of the selling pitch to the funding body) is the prediction of loss of the habitats of these languages, although neither Marshallese nor Dhivehi are in the same immediate danger as Tulun.


Best
Bill

From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
Sent: Monday, 7 April 2014 10:02 PM
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: language loss and climate change

Dear Nigel,
I am not familiar with any such literature (but I will admit that language endangerment is not my primary area of research so there might be someone here who knows about something) but I think that the reason for the lack of such literature (at least in a more visible way if there is any) is that we are just starting to see the effects of climate change on humans (well, beyond floods and droughts...). This article came to my attention yesterday "First Official Climate Change Refugees Evacuate Their Island Homes for Good" ( @ http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/first-official-climate-change-refugees-evacuate-their-island-homes-for-good.htm) and two of the things I thought about were what language(s) they spoke and what would become of their language now that they are being removed from their environment.
A little (very little, just Wikipedia-little) research told me that they are Halia speakers and Ethnologue says that the language has about 20,000 speakers (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/HLA/***EDITION***) so, although it is unlikely that the language as whole will become endangered as a result of this climate-change induced relocation, their dialect might be.
Best,
Jorge

On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>> wrote:
There is a considerable literature on species loss attributable to climate change. Can anyone point me to articles that discuss language loss or endangerment that has come about through the effects of climate change? Thanks in advance.
Nigel

Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK


http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=nigel.vincent



--
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
PhD candidate & Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar
Department of French Studies (Linguistics)
University of Western Ontario
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20140408/7a657424/attachment.htm>