Language Endangerment and Language Maintenance: An Active Approach

David Bradley · Maya Bradley

dic 2013 · Routledge

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Language endangerment is a fundamental issue for humanity. What rights do minority communities have concerning their languages? How does each language conceptualize the world differently? How much knowledge about the world and a local ecosystem is lost when a language disappears? What is the process involved and how can insights about this process contribute to linguistic theory? What typological insights will be lost if undescribed languages disappear before their unique structural properties are known? How can language shift be stopped or reversed?
This volume comprises:
* a general overview introduction
* four theoretical chapters on what happens during language shift
* ten case studies of autochthonous languages under threat
* four case studies of migrant languages at risk
* three concluding chapters discussing strategies and resources for language maintenance.

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David Bradley is Reader in Linguistics at La Trobe University. He has long been working in various minority communities in China and Southeast Asia, and has published a range of descriptive, historical and other studies. Maya Bradley is a Researcher in Lingusitics at La Trobe University. She has published a variety of studies on first and second language Hebrew, English and on minority language of China.