Words and Worlds: World Languages Review 9781853598289

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Words and Worlds

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM Series Editors: Professor Colin Baker, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales, Great Britain and Professor Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA Recent Books in the Series Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom (2nd edn) Angela L. Carrasquillo and Vivian Rodríguez World English: A Study of its Development Janina Brutt-Griffler Power, Prestige and Bilingualism: International Perspectives on Elite Bilingual Education Anne-Marie de Mejía Identity and the English Language Learner Elaine Mellen Day Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education: A Bilingual Approach Norbert Francis and Jon Reyhner The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality Alan Davies Language Socialization in Bilingual and Multilingual Societies Robert Bayley and Sandra R. Schecter (eds) Language Rights and the Law in the United States: Finding our Voices Sandra Del Valle Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings Nancy H. Hornberger (ed.) Languages in America: A Pluralist View (2nd edn) Susan J. Dicker Trilingualism in Family, School and Community Charlotte Hoffmann and Jehannes Ytsma (eds) Multilingual Classroom Ecologies Angela Creese and Peter Martin (eds) Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds) Beyond the Beginnings: Literacy Interventions for Upper Elementary English Language Learners Angela Carrasquillo, Stephen B. Kucer and Ruth Abrams Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy Janina Brutt-Griffler and Manka Varghese (eds) Language Learning and Teacher Education: A Sociocultural Approach Margaret R. Hawkins (ed.) The English Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice Vaidehi Ramanathan Bilingual Education in South America Anne-Marie de Mejía (ed.) Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms Angela Creese For more details of these or any other of our publications, please contact: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 52 Series Editors: Colin Baker and Nancy H. Hornberger

Words and Worlds World Languages Review Fèlix Martí, Paul Ortega, Itziar Idiazabal, Andoni Barreña, Patxi Juaristi, Carme Junyent, Belen Uranga and Estibaliz Amorrortu

UNESCO ETXEA

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto

The authors wish to express their deepest gratitude to the Basque Government, who, in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding signed with UNESCO on 23 July 1997, has financed the World Languages project from its beginnings to the publication of the present volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Words and Worlds: World Languages Revie/Fèlix Martí … [et al.]. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: 52 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Sociolinguistics. 2. Language and languages. 3. Linguistics. I. Marti, F. (Felix) II. Series. P40.W647 2005 303.44-dc22 2005004086 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1–85359–827–5 (hbk) ISBN 1–85359–828–3 (electronic) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2005 UNESCO ETXEA. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

Contents List of Maps ...........................................................................................................................vi Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................vii Prologue ..................................................................................................................................x Introduction ............................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Linguistic Communities...................................................................................10 Chapter 2. The Linguistic Heritage....................................................................................46 Chapter 3. The Official Status of Languages ....................................................................92 Chapter 4. The Use of Languages in Public Administration ........................................119 Chapter 5. Language and Writing....................................................................................131 Chapter 6. Language and Education ...............................................................................150 Chapter 7. Languages and the Media..............................................................................175 Chapter 8. Language and Religion ..................................................................................189 Chapter 9. Transmission and Intergenerational Use of Language ..............................200 Chapter 10. Linguistic Attitudes ......................................................................................214 Chapter 11. The Threats to Languages ............................................................................225 Chapter 12. The Future of Languages .............................................................................249 References ...........................................................................................................................269 Web References...................................................................................................................281 Appendix 1: Survey Questionnaire .................................................................................284 Appendix 2: Index of Contributors .................................................................................289 Appendix 3: List of Informants ........................................................................................291 Appendix 4: Index of Languages, Families and Varieties ............................................301 Subject Index.......................................................................................................................315

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List of Maps Map 1. Genetic Groupings of the Languages of the World Map 2. Languages in the Caucasus Region Map 3. Native American Languages in California Map 4. Sami Language. Language, Territory, and Official Status Map 5. Languages of South Africa Map 6. Great Diversity but only Occasional Use in Administration Map 7. Standardisation in Senegal Map 8. Languages of Central America (Partial) Map 9. The Media and Languages Spoken in Tanzania Map 10. Tamazight Language Areas Map 11. Attitudes and Indian Languages in Canada Map 12. Languages of Colombia Map 13. Language Diversity in China The maps can all be found between pages 248 and 249.

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Acknowledgements The preparation of this Review would not have been possible without the collaboration, contributions, help and advice of a large number of people, institutions and organisations all over the world. In this respect, the World Languages Review can be considered a collective work, indebted to all the contributors listed below. We would therefore like to express our profound gratitude to all those who have disinterestedly supported this project (we apologise for any possible oversight or inaccuracy the list may include): • To the members of the former Board of Directors: José Antonio Ardanza, former President of the Government of the Basque Country; Vigdis Finnbogadottir, Goodwill Ambassador to UNESCO for Languages, Chairperson of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, former President of the Republic of Iceland; Enric Masllorens, Chairman of the UNESCO Centre of Catalonia; Joseph Poth, former Director of the Division of Languages of UNESCO. • To the members of the former Scientific Committee: Miquel Siguán (Chairman), University of Barcelona, Barcelona; E. Annnamalai, Central Institute of Indian Languages, (CIIL), Mysore, India; Denis Cunningham, International Federation of Teachers of Living Languages, (IFTLL), Victoria, Australia; E. Nolue Emenanjo, Nigerian National Institute for Languages, Aba, Nigeria; Irina Khaleeva, Moscow State Linguistics University, Moscow, Russia; Luis Enrique López, PROEIB Andes, Cochabamba, Bolivia; Mohamed Miled, Tunis Language Institute, Tunis; Juan Carlos Moreno, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Philippe N’Tahombaye, University of Burundi, Bujumbura, Burundi; Irmela Neu, Fachhochschule, Munich, Germany; Raymond Renard, UNESCO Chair in Linguistic Planning and Didactics of Languages, University of Mons-Hainaut, Belgium; Ignace Sanwidi, Councillor for Education and the Culture of Peace, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer, University of Carleton, Ottawa, Canada.

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• To the experts of recognised prestige who have contributed to the text of the Review: Anvita Abbi, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Xavier Albó, Peasant Research and Promotion Centre; Isaac Pianko Ashaninka and Joaquim Mana Kaxinawa, Acre Indigenous Teachers Association; Ayo Bamgbose, University of Ibadan; Wynford Bellin, Cardiff University; Jean-Paul Bronckart, University of Geneva; Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Nancy C. Dorian, Bryn Mawr College; Francis Favereau, University of Rennes 2; Joshua Fishman, Jeshiva University; Barbara F. Grimes (Ed.) Ethnologue; Josiane Hamers, University of Laval; Sun Hongkai and Huang Xing, Minority Languages Academic Society of China; Joseba Intxausti; Irina Khaleeva, Moscow State Linguistics University; Omkar N. Koul and Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Central Institute for Indian Languages; Multamia R.M.T. Lauder, University of Indonesia; Chura Mani Bandhu, University of Nepal; Grant D. McConnell, University of Laval; Bartomeu Melià, “Antonio Guasch” Centre for Paraguayan Studies; Juan Carlos Moreno, Autonomous University of Madrid; Raymond Renard, University of MonsHainaut; Suzanne Romaine, Merton College, University of Oxford; Miquel Siguan, University of Barcelona; Miquel Strubell, Open University of Catalonia; Alexey Yeschenko, Pyatigorsk North-Caucasian Centre for Sociolinguistic Studies. • We would especially like to thank Professor Peter Mühlhäusler and Professor Moreno Cabrera for their extensive contributions to Chapters One and Two respectively. • To each and every one of the informants who filled in the more than one thousand questionnaires on their languages or the languages they knew. To all of them we send our warmest thanks for their commitment and for their valuable first-hand contribution (see Appendix 3 for the list of informants). • To the people and institutions with whom a special partnership was established: Stephen Wurm (†) Clinton Robinson, Ray Gordon, and Barbara Grimes, Joe Grimes and Paul Lewis (Summer Institute of Linguistics, SIL) David Dalby Tove Skutnabb-Kangas • To the Spanish Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO. • To the National Commissions for Cooperation with UNESCO all over the world. • To the UNESCO Advisory Committee on Linguistic Pluralism and Multilingual Education. • To the UNESCO Centre of Catalonia and the Linguapax Institute.

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• To the University of the Basque Country – Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. • To Olalla Juaristi, research assistant, UNESCO Etxea. • A special mention for the direct collaborators of the Technical Committee during these years: Maitena Etxebarria, member of the Technical Committee for this report during the years 1998–2000, for her dedication during this period; Izaskun Azueta, Mikel Mendizabal, Marta Pardo, Begoña Arbulu, Maider Huarte, Margareta Almgren, Xabier Monasterio, José Luis Villacorta, Ane Ortega, Esti Izagirre and Olga Andueza as support staff; finally, UNESCO Etxea – UNESCO Centre of the Basque Country, their work team and their Board of Governors, chaired by Jon Arrieta and Ruper Ormaza during all these years, and Mikel Mancisidor, Director of UNESCO Etxea.

Prologue The value of language diversity Languages are humanity’s most valuable cultural heritage. They are fundamental to understanding. Each language provides a system of concepts which helps us to interpret reality. The complexity of reality is easier to understand thanks to the diversity of languages. Progress in understanding is due, amongst other things, to the growing linguistic diversity that has characterised the human species. Languages are also fundamental in the generation and transmission of values. Each language expresses a differentiated ethical sensibility. Each language provides us with symbols and metaphors to deal with the mysterious and the sacred. Furthermore, languages are not closed or exclusive universes. All of them express the rationality of the human species, as well as its common fears and hopes. Linguistic diversity is the most obvious manifestation of cultural diversity. In a world characterised by growing processes of globalisation, it seems necessary to assert the value of cultural diversity as a guarantee of more democratic and more creative coexistence. Cultural uniformity would mean a decline, to the extent that we would lose our ability to give specialised answers to specific challenges. The report “Our Creative Diversity”, published by UNESCO in 1995, pointed out what orientations were necessary to preserve diversity without renouncing positive aspects of globalisation. In the field of cultural and linguistic diversity we often coincide with the criteria of the defenders of diversity of living species in the natural environment. In both cases it is said that there is a need to protect the heritage. The reason is not exclusively ethical. Both the defence of biological diversity and the defence of cultural and linguistic diversity are necessary conditions for the well-being of humans, for the balances that protect life and for the life quality we aspire to develop. The defence of languages and cultures is part of a larger project which aspires to a more rational, fairer and freer organisation of humanity. We have entered the twenty-first century without giving sufficient answers to very serious global problems. These could be grouped under seven headings. First of all, the failure in the system of distribution of the planet’s wealth, which leads to poverty and extreme hardship, so objectively described by the successive reports on human development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Secondly, unsustainable production and consumption systems, which increasingly deteriorate the planet’s

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ecological balance, as studies by the Worldwatch Institute, amongst others, have shown. Thirdly, the non-fulfilment of international conventions in matters of human rights, as denounced by the annual reports of Amnesty International and other governmental and non-governmental human rights organisations, as well as the persistence of undemocratic governments. Fourth, the weakness of the United Nations and of international tribunals as a result of the inertia of the system of state sovereignties and the excessive weight carried by some states. Fifth, the practice of very unbalanced cultural relations to the extent that the technologically dominant culture aggressively imposes its myths and its values on other cultures. Sixth, the marginalisation of many peoples and minorities whose aspiration to various forms of cultural or political self-determination is not sufficiently recognised by centralist and uniformist political traditions. Seventh, the use of enormous scientific and technological resources for security and defence systems which have little bearing on the objectives of human security and peace. These challenges also define our responsibilities. We want to build a world with fair economic structures, with a sustainable model of development, with effective protection of human rights, with a United Nations that can exercise governance of globality, with harmonious coexistence between cultures and religions, with recognition of all peoples and with peace guaranteed by human security.

Globalisation, socio-economic development and protection of language The protection of the linguistic heritage forms part of the construction of a more orderly, more balanced and more advanced world. There is a very clear relationship between language policies, economic, cultural and social development, the perfection of democratic systems, stability and peace. In the past, some very mistaken principles regarding linguistic questions gained prestige which fortunately now are no longer defended. It was thought that languages could be ranked according to a hierarchy and that it was therefore a good thing to replace the use of inferior languages with that of the higher languages essential for science or for abstract speculation. Today we know that all languages are equal in dignity and in communication and thinking capacity and that the hierarchy among languages is based on prejudices characteristic of cultural colonialism. It was also believed that linguistic uniformity of the population was desirable in the governance of states, in the same way as there was opposition to other aspects of pluralism such as religion or ethics. Today we attach prestige to policies that can manage complex societies. Pluralism is perceived as an asset. Ethnic, religious or linguistic cleansing belongs to mistaken, primitive political philosophies. In recent years, studies by sociolinguists have drawn attention to the speed of the changes affecting linguistic communities. Languages are living realities and there have always been relations between linguistic communities that have contributed to their development. Relations of power, wars, migrations and technological changes have had an important influence in the life of languages. All languages, with the

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passage of time, have evolved. Linguistic contacts have been something very common. Many languages have suffered irreversible processes of minorisation or of repression and have died. Others have changed through the evolution of the linguistic community itself and have given rise to new languages. Scientists of language warn us of the conventional nature of our concept of language or of languages. In reality what we find are linguistic practices which become diversified over the human geography but that do not permit the establishment of clear borders. Political borders are often presented as linguistic borders, but in the majority of cases there is no real break to be seen in the linguistic practices of areas separated by borders. Furthermore, while in some territories only one language is used, in other territories it is normal for various different linguistic communities to coexist in some form and for multilingualism to be a generalised and socially well considered practice. What is new in our time is the pace affecting linguistic contacts, the growing complexity of all societies from the point of view of their linguistic diversity and the generalised risk of linguistic take-overs as a result of certain aspects of globalisation.

Goals of the Review This Review sets out to present the universal sociolinguistic situation. The Review describes the linguistic diversity which currently characterises the human species and the trends indicating the risks of losing a considerable part of this diversity. The Review is not intended as a linguistic atlas. Many researchers have prepared maps locating the linguistic communities and illustrating linguistic contacts. Neither is it intended to provide an official list of the world’s languages or an encyclopaedia classifying each and every one of them. Many works have already been published in this field without having reached general agreement as to either the number of languages that exist or even a form of reckoning that distinguishes properly between languages, dialects and pidgins. The Review sets out to present significant data on linguistic diversity and its speeding evolution. The authors of the Review have sought out opinions on linguistic uses and their evolution from individuals, groups and institutions concerned with the trends they observe as members of specific linguistic communities or as researchers. The Review is intended as an appeal to the responsibility of everyone to protect linguistic diversity. In this respect, the Review aims to contribute to the rise of a linguistic ethic, that is to a set of attitudes in favour of the protection of the linguistic heritage. Finally, the most important objective of the Review is to establish a set of guidelines with a view to the future. Many actors play a part in the life of linguistic communities: governments, popular movements, teachers, media, religious leaders, non-governmental organisations, research centres and of course self-organised linguistic communities themselves. The Review puts forward guidelines of language policy for all these actors. In the realisation that each specific situation has novel aspects, the Review merely recommends language policy measures on the basis of a typification of situations which would have to be adapted and completed locally. In many cases the objective of the Review will have been

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achieved if it avoids mistakes that have been very common in public interventions in matters of language policy. For this reason some authors are sceptical about the appropriateness of promoting language policies. The Review, with its recommendations, tries to allow for modest, sensible language policy measures that favour the weakest or most endangered linguistic communities.

History of the Review In preparing the Review a fairly complex methodology was established. The DirectorGeneral of UNESCO Federico Mayor Zaragoza at a seminar of experts held in Bilbao (Spain) in 1996, proposed the drafting of a review on the world’s languages. The government of the Basque Country (Spain) provided the funds for the first review in the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding signed on 23 July 1997. Coordination of the project was entrusted to UNESCO Etxea (UNESCO Centre of the Basque Country). A board of directors was set up for the project, along with a scientific committee and a technical committee, which worked at a good pace during the years 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. We decided to launch a survey to get direct information from the linguistic communities themselves and from a variety of informers. More than one thousand replies were received, which once analysed allowed confirmation or modification of the research hypotheses used to draft the surveys. At the same time, continental meetings served to get a better understanding of the linguistic problems of each continent and request the collaboration of experts for the different parts of the Review. The Linguapax university network coordinated by the UNESCO Chair at the University of Mons (Belgium) collaborated in the different stages of the project. The scientific committee, chaired by Dr Miquel Siguan, met regularly and discussed the successive draftings of the review with the members of the board of directors and the technical committee. The final result is the one offered in this text.

About language diversity and social peace Linguistic issues have a very fundamental effect on human identities at an individual and a collective level, and it is not easy to deal with linguistic pluralism calmly, rationally and objectively. In some states there are conflicts which have linguistic components. For this reason reflection on the past and future of linguistic communities can be seen as over-politicised or destabilising. The Review does not set out to disguise the political implications of the management of linguistic diversity by states and by the international community, but it stresses the pacifying nature of a management of linguistic pluralism which takes into account the principles of democracy and justice. The Review is offered in the framework of the Linguapax spirit that inspired UNESCO linguistic activities during many years in the conviction that language policies which respect diversity and promote linguistic communication also favour peace. Linguistic security – that is the perception by linguistic communities that they are not going to suffer deliberate aggressions – is one of the conditions for peace. Multilingual education is another of the conditions for peace. Self-enclosed communities that are

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unable to understand other communities living around them can give rise to prejudices, fear and intolerance. Peace is built with the enjoyment of rights that affirm one’s own linguistic identity and by promoting relations of understanding and sympathy towards other linguistic communities. These judicious principles constitute the Linguapax philosophy. The Review is inspired in these principles and it is hoped it will contribute to the solution of conflicts with a linguistic dimension. This Review is the result of a work done by an independent group of experts. The authors have worked in excellent collaboration with the Languages Division, until it was suppressed in 1999, as well as with many permanent delegations of the UNESCO member states, but the Review is the responsibility of the technical committee, the scientific committee and the board of directors. Its mistakes and its limitations must be attributed to its authors, and as figures in many publications, the opinions and judgements expressed cannot be considered official opinions or judgements of UNESCO. The editors offer this text with the intention of contributing to a muchneeded international debate on measures to protect the linguistic heritage. Amongst sociolinguists this debate already exists, but it would be good if this Review served to enlarge it. It is indispensable that we find out the points of view of linguistic communities, of state and intra-state governments, of international organisations, of NGOs, of teachers, of experts in the new communication technologies, of cultural promoters in the cities and of everyone interested in the life of languages.

Contributions and limits of the Review The Review is intended to be of use to all citizens, in the same way as reports on the other great challenges affecting our societies are directed at all the citizens. The Review aspires to go beyond ignorance and the prejudices which negatively affect the life of linguistic communities. At the same time, the Review is not intended merely to present the situation of languages in danger of extinction. It wants to contribute to organising the relations between all languages according to new criteria, that is the relations between local, national, state, regional and international languages. All languages must think about their future and their mutual articulation. In this respect the group of experts proposes a text whose interest is universal. In the context of speeding globalisation, all languages must imagine and find their place in the universe of languages, that is in the set of all human languages. The possible models for international linguistic coexistence must be the subject of debate, and ultimately of individual and collective decisions. The Review can help to establish hypotheses free of private interests of a political, economic or ideological type. All those who have contributed to the preparation of this Review are conscious of the limits of the text they are offering to the public opinion. They deem it to be a first global diagnosis with a series of recommendations the application of which shall be subject to adaptations to each concrete situation. They believe that the Review can orientate a wide international debate and that the observations made by the readers will help draft future reports about the world languages.

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Reading notes Apart from being able to read the Review from the first to the last chapter, the monographic character of the book allows the reader to read each one independently. The reader can make more rapid progress, for example, following the recommendations that one can find at the end of each chapter. Another interesting itinerary would be to follow all the testimonies of the informants that are marked in italics throughout the text and that is maybe the more original and authentic contribution of the Review. A graphic view of world language diversity can be obtained from the thirteen maps of thirteen different geographical areas that are included in a separate section according to the interest that a particular area has as an example of the phenomena analysed in each chapter, together with the tables and graphics. The various monographic texts, in boxes, of the specialists that have collaborated in the Review, offer a varied and contrasted way of understanding many of the more highlighted aspects of the situation of the languages of the world. The reader can also consult the different indexes, the extent list of collaborators and informants, the questionnaire used, the list of the languages quoted in the Review or the subject index always depending on the reader’s interest.

Introduction How can we describe the sociolinguistic situation of the languages of the world in a way that lets us assess the situation of each language and at the same time put forward recommendations or patterns of action to help preserve the linguistic and cultural heritage of humanity? Before a challenge of this scale, the technical committee felt it was essential to turn – amongst other sources – to the speakers of the languages themselves, to ask the members of the linguistic communities directly for their view of the situation their language is in and collect first-hand the opinions of the protagonists themselves. We believe that the survival of a language basically depends on what its speakers, its community, wants to and can do with their language. To obtain this information, the technical committee prepared a questionnaire specially for this Review and distributed it to an extensive network of informants during the five years of work. The questionnaires have been returned by those informants who wanted to collaborate in this project and to whom we are deeply grateful (see the respective Appendixes) The data received via the questionnaire are a basic reference providing the review’s most original information. However, to respond to the review’s objectives of explanation and understanding, we have also had access to other sources. There are many research and documentation centres on languages that are carrying out systematic work on the circumstances surrounding languages in different parts of the world. Catalogues, repertories, atlases and various works of a linguistic type have been of great use to us and have provided invaluable references (see the respective Appendixes). We have turned to many authors and to members of many institutions with a record in the fight against the loss of linguistic diversity for their collaboration through specific contributions. These contributions have enormously enlarged our perspective and undoubtedly done a lot to enrich this Review. In involving the largest possible number of specialists and/or cultural agents committed to the defence of linguistic diversity and wealth, the meetings held in different parts of the world have also been very useful. In the course of events during the four years spent preparing the Review, it has been possible to meet many people whose academic speciality, awareness or experience in work on the preservation of linguistic diversity has made them collaborators in the project. We would like to pick

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out the international seminars held in Bolivia (Cochabamba, March 1999), the Russian Federation (Elista, May 1999), Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou, June 1999), India (Mysore, March 2000) and Australia (Melbourne, April, 2001), which made it possible to significantly enlarge the group of collaborators and informants, as well as helping the Review to accurately reflect the linguistic situation in different parts of the world. It is essential that we report the different views of what languages are, of how languages in contact in certain areas relate to one another, of the uses that bring prestige to languages in each context, of how diversity, complementarity or relations of domination or dependence of languages are experienced in each area. Experts in each region, as well as the enlightened members of each community, have a lot to say and offer with a view to greater understanding of linguistic diversity in the world, avoiding the dangers threatening it and feeding the hope that it can be developed. And our aim has been to reflect this in our Review.

Contents of the Review The Review consists of twelve chapters of different types. The first two are principally based on contributions by experts not on the technical committee and do not therefore refer to data obtained from the questionnaire. Their contributions, like those by the rest of the collaborators, complement and balance the contents of the Review. The nine chapters that follow sum up the quantitative and qualitative contributions gathered by the specific empirical research this Review is based on. As we shall see, these chapters cover the most significant sociolinguistic aspects in an account of the situation of the languages of the world. The last chapter of the Review makes up the prospective section. It answers one of the basic objects of this review: to put forward action plans for languages to the different agents involved. In the course of the different chapters, contributions by various specialists are included in a different format. Similarly, the maps included have been drawn up on the basis of the information obtained from different sources, to illustrate some of the most significant areas from the point of view of linguistic diversity. These additions are of a varied nature and the feelings they reflect do not necessarily coincide. They complement the views of the technical team and substantially enrich the contents of the review. The contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds: recognised linguists, sociolinguists who have dedicated all their reflection and life to the cause of the survival of linguistic diversity, politicians responsible for linguistic affairs in their countries, activists belonging to indigenous communities who tell of their own experiences, teachers, journalists, writers, etc., all united behind the cause of linguistic survival, even though the forms and strategies adopted may be different. As we have already said, the voices of the voluntary informants play a central part in this document. There are abundant accounts taken from the questionnaire and included amongst the chapters. We feel that this Review must also be a meeting point and a place for exchanging initiatives. In it appear similar experiences in places far apart and differing experiences in neighbouring communities, even in cases of groups

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with similar social characteristics. We feel that a mutual knowledge of these experiences will be enriching for everyone and will encourage new relations of exchange. We have dedicated Chapter One to clearing up terminologies and to understanding the concept of linguistic community. This is the object of the work of Professor Mühlhaüsler. We believe his particular knowledge of one of the geographical regions with the greatest linguistic wealth, the Pacific and Australia, makes a basic contribution to understanding the data supplied by the informants and to guiding the policies of preservation and furtherance that should be promoted. We feel his reflections on the concept of language, a concept which tends to be heavily biased by Western experience and which can cause so much confusion when it comes to understanding and especially intervening in other experiences, are particularly relevant. The members of the technical committee consider that his view of linguistic ecology allows a suitable description of very diverse linguistic situations which will be reflected through the data gathered from the questionnaires. Chapter Two, called “The Linguistic Heritage”, offers a general overview of the planet’s linguistic diversity and includes an extensive contribution on the subject from a classical typological standpoint by the collaborating lecturer and member of the scientific committee, Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera. The technical committee felt it was important to include this contribution in the Review because it provides a general overview of the planet’s linguistic diversity analysed by number of speakers, linguistic families and geographical areas, constituting an essential academic reference in a review such as ours. In addition, it was felt important to include this contribution because it is not just a sterile academic description but points out the dangers threatening diversity. It also provides a personal view of the reasons why the diversity of languages is endangered. Chapter Three deals with the analysis of the status of languages. In particular, it covers the legal or official status to be seen on the global linguistic scene. In this chapter we would like to point out the contribution by Professor Annamalai, who takes a novel and realistic approach to linguistic policy aimed at dealing with multilingual relations grounded on rigorous theories. This proposal not only has implications for traditionally multilingual societies like India, this specialist’s country of origin, but also has implications of relevance for most parts of the planet. Multilingual relations are also arising in Western countries; his proposals are especially interesting as an alternative to the monolingual model imposed by Western tradition and the many problems it poses in approaching a reality which is multilingual and multicultural. Following this, chapter four analyses the use of language in administration. Administration is the area which in certain linguistic situations best reflects the legal status of the language. Writing, education, the media and religion are the spheres of use analysed in the following chapters: Chapters Five, Six, Seven and Eight. The enormous disparity in sociolinguistic situations and the different ways they are seen do not allow simplifications. It is important to understand that these are always dynamic processes and that there is never just one factor to explain the reality of a language. Multifactorial analyses are what allow greater realism in dealing with the

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information provided in the accounts gathered. Chapter Nine analyses the trends observed in the intergenerational transmission and use of languages. Chapter Ten studies linguistic attitudes and Chapter Eleven sums up the dangers and threats the informants observe in the languages and communities mentioned. These three sections provide the most disturbing information contained in the review. In fact, intergenerational transmission as observed in the sample under study is in an alarming situation. Almost 50% of languages are no longer habitually transmitted. Intergenerational use of languages as reviewed by the informants seems to have deteriorated even more, since only 30% of the languages studied are used among the younger generations of their communities. In the remaining cases, communication between young people is established in a different language, generally the dominant one. The title of Chapter Eleven, “The Dangers and Threats Facing Languages”, is not very optimistic either. However, as can be seen in the plentiful accounts reproduced, more and more linguistic communities are becoming aware of the dangers threatening their languages and therefore their cultures and their very communities, and are beginning to rebel against the trend towards linguistic substitution which only a few had noticed until now. Finally, Chapter Twelve looks to the future. It points out the need to establish new linguistic models based on the acknowledgement and celebration of cultural and linguistic diversity. Other highlighted topics are the importance of universalised multilingual education that should not be limited to the learning of a few large circulation languages, the need for progress in the field of linguistic rights, the access of small and medium sized linguistic communities to the new information technologies or enhancing the value of the own language as an element of the economic development of communities. This chapter also puts forward some proposals to better study the linguistic contact and the rapid evolution of diversity, especially caused by increasing population movements and migrations. It recommends the creation of new research centres in sociolinguistics and suggests specific responsibilities for UNESCO and for the states. The chapter ends by connecting languages with peace and welcoming the new languages that will appear during the 21st century.

The questionnaire In the course of forty questions, most of them open, we have gathered the characteristics of languages and of their linguistic communities, regarding their denomination, uses, representations, attitudes and the linguistic expectations shown by the speakers of different languages. The questionnaire was drawn up according to criteria now classical in sociolinguistics, such as Haugen’s (1972), mentioned by Mühlhaüsler in this same review (see Appendix 1). In spite of some difficulties, the questionnaire has had a relevant virtue; it has allowed the informants great freedom in their answers. This fact is especially worth noting as it has become a very valuable aspect in the review. The informants have supplied the facts they felt were most relevant, regardless of whether or not they were

Introduction

5

required of them. Obviously this very aspect could reduce the credibility of the results, just as it is obvious that the diversity of the informants (organisations, linguists, members of the community, etc.) could have the same effect. However, since these two facts (differences in the perception of the relevance of the information and differences in the involvement of the informants) were detected at the beginning, the technical committee has chosen, first of all, to pay greater attention to the qualitative information and, secondly, to include, as well as the objective data, the informants’ representations of the reality. Subjection to objective data often involves a distortion of reality, especially inasmuch as it is altered by non-objective elements (feelings, desires, opinions, etc.). In the case of this World Languages Review, it is obvious that emotional or professional involvement impregnates the objective elements and we have therefore felt that representations of reality should also form part of the review. After all, not a few linguistic normalisation projects have failed because they did not take into account the wishes, ideologies, feelings, etc. of those affected. Reading the questionnaires, we have been struck by the informants’ urge to communicate and by the hope this Review has evidently stirred up in many communities, and we believe that rather than acting as depositories, our duty is to make these voices reach the largest possible number of people and organisations.

The language sample The research this Review is based on is still in progress and has been receiving questionnaires uninterruptedly since 1998. We have received more than 1000 questionnaires, and although they sometimes refer to the same language, the total number of languages to which we had access is more than 800. The quantitative analysis, however, has been carried out using a sample of 525 languages. This sample corresponds to the languages received as of July 2001, the deadline established for beginning the statistical analysis. The statistical treatment made use of the analysis procedures offered in the SPSS program (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Different samples were taken: from 100 languages, 400 languages and 525 languages. We have been able to observe that, regardless of the number of languages or questionnaires processed, the main figures, as well as the general trends, remain constant. The range of situations of the languages for which we have received information provides an outlook as disturbing as it is suggestive. The sample contains languages with large numbers of speakers and used for a large number of purposes and languages which are now down to their last speakers, expanding languages and disappearing languages, languages that are official in some states and that are disappearing in others, usually marginalised by the authorities-in short, a wide range of situations. The technical committee has in no case wanted to demonstrate a common denominator in these situations, so much as, on the contrary, to reflect all their disparity and with it the many strategies that intervene in the dynamics of languages, since by comparing and contrasting, ideas can arise that contribute to the preservation of linguistic diversity.

6

Words and Worlds

Although the sample we have worked with is clearly limited (approximately 10% of all the world’s languages), the results clearly show what other specialists have already stated: one of the underlying causes of the acceleration in the trend towards world linguistic uniformity is the increasing inequality between languages and, of course, their speakers, such that the growth of some languages involves a reduction in the number of speakers of many others and/or their disappearance. This process has harmful consequences in that it drags other communities after it by destroying their traditional web of communications, as we shall see later. The sample reveals trends in the sociolinguistic behaviour of linguistic communities and makes it possible to plan actions aimed at restoring or preserving the linguistic balance. However, the Review does not present detailed figures for each of the languages making up the sample. It is not a catalogue in which to look for specific, singularised information.

Details of the language The authors of the Review are convinced that standardising the names of languages or glottonyms is an urgent task, especially in an increasingly interconnected world. The enormous task of documentation carried out in this respect by the Ethnologue strikes us as a basic and indispensable contribution for this process of normalisation, which should facilitate the identification of languages and correct terms that are unsuitable for a variety of reasons (pejorative or inaccurate terms, unnecessary heteroglottonyms, etc.). The request for information in this respect is intended to propose suitable names, giving preference to the use of the autoglottonym or name the speakers themselves give their language. In other words, in those cases in which there is no traditional designation and whenever the term is pejorative, we advocate the use of the autoglottonym to identify the language. The authors of the Review do not want to overlook those cases in which there is no glottonym and in which creating one could contradict the cosmovision of the people concerned. After all, the concept of languages is a construct alien to many cultures. In these cases, and for want of further discussion of this issue in the sphere of linguistics, we propose the use of the auto-ethnonym or name of the ethnic group the speakers belong to and, failing this, some historical or geographical term allowing its identification. Obviously, this proposal still accepts the notion of language as an entity with fixed limits, but we do not believe there is any alternative that can be proposed without prior discussion in depth. We therefore wish merely to draw attention to this issue and propose it as a subject for future reflection. In connection with the question of glottonyms, linguistic variation, and with it linguistic filiation, inevitably arises. The inference is clearly that the attribution of a language to a specific group or family basically depends on the informants’ theoretical option in the case of professional linguists and in other cases on their

Introduction

7

perception and/or intention. The same language can be seen either as a variety of another language or else as an independent language or as a language group. Even when linguistics has given priority to the criterion of intelligibility in determining linguistic borders, the fact is that the nature of languages as a continuum, the relations established between communities, the reciprocity or otherwise of intelligibility and, in short, the actual wish to understand, clearly interfere with this criterion. At the same time, the notion of languages as discreet entities usually overlooks their historical development apart from their “official” history, which sets out to give a fragmented view of communities, as though their historical background had nothing to do with the surrounding communities. All of this raises questions that go far beyond technical aspects of linguistic filiation and pose another challenge: how to designate the set of intelligible varieties we consider “languages”. It is obvious that using a single term distorts the perception of variety and contributes to uniformity, but it is also true that the use of various terms favours fragmentation and this can be fatal for the preservation of linguistic diversity. The authors of this Review believe that this is another of the theoretical aspects which, on account of their importance in the life of communities, deserve to be treated in depth over and above technical aspects.

The informants We have tried, often successfully, to obtain first-hand information, that is, to ensure that the information came from informants who were members of the respective linguistic communities or were closely connected to them. Thus more than half of the informants, approximately 60%, say they belong to that linguistic community. Identification with the community, furthermore, is backed up with reasons of ethnic and/or linguistic membership. Almost 40% say they are not members of the community. These are researchers or people who, in one way or another, are working for the community in question. Some researchers, though, identify themselves as members of the community precisely because of their work or because they have learned the language. I belong to the community by descent and blood ties. I also speak (the language) fluently. (Maori, New Zealand) I consider myself a member (of the community) because I am part of that culture and my parents brought me up in the belief that I am a native like them, I was born in that community. (Yine, Peru) I am a speaker and writer, but I am not a native or a native speaker. I am not a gypsy but I know the four dialects of the Romany language that are spoken in Romania by the Roms (Gypsies). (Romany, Romania) The significant proportion of informants who say they belong to the linguistic community for which they are supplying information strikes us as a decisive factor.

8

Words and Worlds

We know that this adds subjectivity to the information but, in view of the circumstances, it is obvious that no-one knows the linguistic reality like the member involved. Since the aim is to create awareness and help to reverse the trend towards uniformity, we believe that this connivance with his or her linguistic reality, far from detracting from the review’s validity, enriches it. This element of will must be taken into account in analysing the results, since the Review includes details of languages whose speakers are already aware of the need to revitalise it or of its value for the community in general, and, in the case of the specialists (language informants), the very fact that the languages have research and researchers itself singles them out from the majority of the world’s languages. Appendix 2 and Appendix 3 contain a list of all the people and institutions who have contributed to this Review so far. We would like to take this opportunity to express once again our profound gratitude to all of them.

The contributions We have tried to include contributions by experts representing a variety of geographical, sociopolitical and cultural contexts, coming from different scientific, social and cultural backgrounds and belonging to a range of academic, political or sociocultural institutions. Although they all show a positive awareness as regards preservation of the linguistic heritage, one can find opinions that may differ amongst themselves or from the approach taken by the technical committee. We feel this is a reflection of the reality which need not be hidden in working for the common cause of the defence of linguistic diversity. In spite of all the efforts, however, we realise that we have not managed to contact all the recognised specialists on the subject. What we can say is that the requests for participation have had a widespread general acceptance for which we are profoundly grateful. The contributions by the collaborators are included in the text in a different format. The content and form, of course, is the responsibility of the author signing them. The members of the technical committee are responsible for their placement. We are grateful for their generosity in sharing their experience and knowledge in favour of the common cause which involves us all: the preservation of linguistic diversity.

With a view to the next Review We believe the usefulness of the project also lies in its nature as a reference for successive editions and it allows to enlarge the data base. It is a point of departure which raises many elements for reflection, offers a wide range of initiatives for the preservation of languages which are being developed in a wide range of communities and hopes to take advantage of and publicise the talent and creativity of many communities in the preservation of their linguistic heritage. At the same time, the prospective side of the review feeds on the multiple effective actions in different parts of the world, actions that have rarely served as a model for

Introduction

9

other communities, on account of the obstacles to information and to its dissemination. We have tried to palliate these obstacles by listening closely to their proposals with the explicit object of acting as a mouthpiece for all those who, having made valuable contributions to the preservation, revival and recovery of their languages, have been generous enough to share their experiences with us. The pages that follow are an initial approach to the enormous wealth of information gathered in the course of preparing this Review. Other readings, other interpretations, will help spread it farther and better, as established and growing communications networks, especially through computers, gather and disseminate this splendid documentation. For the time being, in response to all the information received, we are presenting this Review with the intention of: • Generating pride, self-esteem and prestige in the speakers and promoters of the world’s languages, so that they will continue to work in favour of their heritage without looking down on or weakening languages with which they share speakers and their communicative space. • Providing models for action, raising awareness and promotion that have been positive in their respective communities so that they can provide an incentive and a stimulus in other situations and one to continue in those where they have already been tried successfully. • Denouncing threats and warning of the dangerous situations languages are facing, so as to rouse awareness in the authorities and the general population in favour of the preservation and development of the linguistic heritage. • Attracting the support of those who have the responsibility and the power to reverse the trend towards linguistic uniformity. The Technical Committee: Fèlix Martí, Paul Ortega, Itziar Idiazabal, Andoni Barreña, Patxi Juaristi, Carme Junyent, Belen Uranga and Estibaliz Amorrortu

Chapter 1

Linguistic Communities This Review is concerned with languages, language communities or speech communities along with language ecologies. The reader will find that the terminology used is not new, though we would like to underline the fact that the traditional definitions of some terms and ideas are not adequate to describe the real situation of languages in the world. Thus, we wish to make clear that languages are neither abstract entities nor independent systems as the Western Linguistics tradition has portrayed them to be. Languages are rather historical products related to each other that the communities use for several purposes: to communicate, to represent their world and to generate thoughts. The attempts to formalize certain aspects of a language, such as the grammar of a language, do not tackle the real nature of a language, that is, its social aspect. Languages are social and identifying realities, they are thoughts and values provoking realities and the strict framework of a grammar or a classical dictionary cannot handle such aspects of the language. A great variety of parameters is needed in order to define a language as an ecological system. The technical committee considered it necessary to devote a chapter to clarify the terminology used in the field. Professor Mühlhäusler (University of Adelaide, Australia), who studies linguistic realities very different from the Western ones and is an expert on languages from Australia and the Pacific area, has been invited to write this chapter for the Review. As Professor Mühlhäusler points out, the chapter presents many of the terms that have been used to describe sociolinguistic realities that are different from the languages and patterns of language use around the globe. The chapter also presents the set of parameters that will be used to define the language ecologies. The questionnaire designed to collect the data in the review is also based on this parameter framework that was originally presented by Haugen (1972). The chapter and the whole review describe the different situations of languages and language ecologies, not with great thoroughness but indicating which aspects of the relations among different linguistic groups are the healthiest or the most pathologic for the purpose of linguistic diversity. We believe that the clarifications of the terminology as well as the description of the different language ecologies are an accurate reflection of the descriptive and prescriptive aims of the review.

10

Linguistic Communities

11

1. Introduction This chapter will be concerned with a number of issues that are fundamental to the task of understanding the vast diversity of languages and patterns of language use around the globe. It is hoped that the understanding gained can contribute to the urgent task of maintaining linguistic and cultural diversity. The problem which gave rise to the UNESCO review of the state of the world’s languages is that linguistic and cultural diversity, which until the advent of the modern industrial age was a selfregulating and self-sustaining system, is no longer self-sustaining and like other phenomena such as climate or biological diversity, requires management. Left to its own devices, linguistic and cultural diversity is likely to rapidly decline, giving way to monolingualism and monoculturalism. A major challenge to scholars working in this area is the widespread perception that we are witnessing a natural process of competition between less fit and more fit ways of communication, the end of which only a few competitors will survive. There is a very strong intellectual tradition in Western thinking about language that this is also a desirable process, that the replacement of a very large number of languages and ways of communication by a few modern standardised languages will lead to greater economic efficiencies, a decrease in human conflicts and greater human well-being. Linguistic diversity in popular perception is a reflection of the curse of Babel. The idea that linguistic diversity is an asset or even a treasure is widespread in traditional societies that cherish multilingual skills, though the wish to preserve one’s own small language is growing stronger among many ethnic groups in modern industrialised societies as well. The revival of minority languages in Spain, France or Britain are recent examples of this. Fishman (1991), one of the principal theoreticians on language revival, has strongly emphasised the rationality of this wish and we can now witness a reframing of the question, ‘How can we achieve greater efficiencies through the reduction and streamlining of diversity?’ to a new question, ‘How can linguistic diversity be employed in solving social, environmental and technological problems?’ This reframing goes hand in hand with the emergence of a new paradigm, the ecological paradigm in many areas of enquiry, including linguistics (Fill & Mühlhäusler (eds) 2001/Mühlhäusler 2002). The ecological paradigm has a number of characteristics, including the following: • • • • •

considerations not just of system internal factors but wider environmental ones; awareness of the dangers of monoculturalism and loss of diversity; awareness of the limitations of both natural and human resources; long-term vision; and awareness of those factors that sustain the health of ecologies.

A fundamental principle of management is that one can only manage what one knows. Two related principles are one can only manage what one can talk about and one can only manage what one cares for. This paper aims at summarising existing knowledge on the

12

Words and Worlds

issue of speech communities and to draw attention to the important issue of talking about the phenomenon. It is argued that existing knowledge is patchy and that unreflected use of words such as ‘language,’ ‘tribe’ or ‘community’ make management very difficult and whether political and economic leaders care about languages remains to be seen. An appreciation of linguistic diversity alone, it is argued, is not enough. It presupposes an understanding of the nature of this diversity. The complexity of the issues, the limitations of time and space and the urgency of action make it necessary to resort to shortcuts, simplification and abstractions and, above all, focussing on a smaller selection of parameters that are desirable in a parameter-rich ecological approach.

2. Methodological considerations In what follows I propose to adopt the classical ‘scientific’ method of proceeding from a research question to observation, classification and eventual theory formation. Put differently, I shall try to develop a tool or theory which can be used to reverse the trend towards language loss. Given the novelty of the problem, I shall concentrate heavily on the pre-theoretical stages of observation and classification. I shall be guided by the suggestion of the editors of this volume and carry out my observation and classification from the perspective of the community of users of a language or languages. I shall further be guided by Haugen (1972) who in his seminal paper ‘The Ecology of Language’ has suggested a list of questions to be asked. For any given ‘language1’, then, we should want to have answers to the following ecological questions: • What is its classification in relation to other languages? This answer would be given by historical and descriptive linguists. • Who are its users? This is a question of linguistic demography, locating its users with respect to locale, class, religion or any other relevant grouping. • What are its domains of use? This is a question of sociolinguistics, discovering whether its use is unrestricted or limited in specific ways. • What concurrent languages are employed by its users? We may call this a problem of dialinguistics, to identify the degree of bilingualism present and the degree of overlap among the languages. • What internal varieties does the language show? This is the task of a dialectology that will recognize not only regional, but also social and contactual dialects. • What is the nature of its written traditions? This is the province of philology, the study of written texts and their relationship to speech. • To what degree has its written form been standardised, i.e. unified and codified? This is the province of prescriptive linguistics, the traditional grammarians and lexicographers.

The notion of ‘given language’ is highly problematic and will be discussed in greater detail below.

1

Linguistic Communities

13

• What kind of institutional support has it won, either in government, education, or private organisations, either to regulate its form or propagate it? We may call this study glotto-politics. • What are the attitudes of its users towards the language, in terms of intimacy and status, leading to personal identification? We may call this field of ethnolinguistics. • Finally we may wish to sum up its status in a typology of ecological classification, which will tell us something about where the language stands and where it is going in comparison with the other languages of the world.

3. Language communities, speech communities, language ecologies: some terminological issues A major problem in doing this is a terminological one. The received wisdom among both academics and lay persons in Western societies is that the notion of language and the associated notion of language community is a relatively unproblematic one, that languages are somehow ‘given’ and can be objectively described, classified and analysed. However, on closer inspection, it emerges that there is no such thing as a cultural neutral definition of a language and that Haugen’s notion of a ‘given’ language cannot be easily applied. Rather we are dealing with quite diverse phenomena which from time to time have been labelled ‘language,’ mainly by professional linguists or by language policy makers. The experience of most writers on the matter of European national languages has strongly influenced their views of what languages are. However, even an inspection of European national languages demonstrates considerable heterogeneity. The historical forces which have brought into being standard French differ greatly from those involved in the development of standard Italian, Norwegian, Bosnian or Modern Greek, one of the differences being the extent of deliberate human planning by speakers or outsiders. Haugen’s characterisation of the Scandinavian languages as ‘cultural artefacts’ (1972) can be extended to a wide range of other languages. Languages thus can be seen as the outcome of a unique mix of cultural and historical forces. The diversity of human ways of speaking is not a natural process of speciation and the practice of using the label ‘natural language’ is an example of the typical process of myth creation: the confusion of history with nature. That languages are the outcome of a vast number of historical processes acting on an as yet ill defined natural human language ability increases rather than decreases the importance of diversity. The maintenance of languages as memories of cultural experience and adaptation to specific conditions would seem far more important than the maintenance of relatively superficial varieties of the universal theme ‘language’. In this connection we need to examine how linguists have regarded the relationship between languages and the world. In Western linguistics one can distinguish four views. (1) Independency hypothesis (Chomsky, cognitive linguistics). Language is for cognition – it exists in a social and environmental vacuum. (2) Language is constructed by the world (Marr).

14

Words and Worlds

(3) The world is constructed by language (structuralism and post structuralism). (4) Language is interconnected with the world – it both constructs and is constructed by it (ecolinguistics). The ecological view would appear to be the most complex, but at the same time the most realistic as it caters for the fact that languages combine independence from the world with dependency on the world as well as their ability to shape the world through a range of ecological interdependencies. The problem with finding a satisfactory definition of language is encountered again when defining the notion of community (see below).

4. Types of languages The following is an attempt to identify some of the principal parameters that can be employed in characterising different social types of languages. Individual languages can be conceived as a kind of matrix of parameters including: 4.1 Bounded versus continuous Before the emergence of nation states and colonisation, language boundaries did not exist in many parts of the world. Instead, there were dialectal or language chains spoken over wide areas. There was for instance a Germanic dialect chain located between the north of Scandinavia and the south of Italy. Adjacent varieties were mutually intelligible with intelligibility declining with increasing geographical distance. Thus speakers of varieties on both sides of the present border between the Netherlands and Germany could intercommunicate freely, whilst the same speakers experienced difficulties understanding varieties spoken a few hundred kilometres further south or north. Intelligibility on such a chain resulted from close structural and lexical similarities of adjacent varieties but also from institutionalised conventions for endo and exolexicons. This terminological distinction means that speakers actively use a particular lexical item (say British English ‘tap’ or ‘bucket’) whilst passively recognising other speech varieties (American English ‘faucet’ and ‘pail’). Table 1 shows how in the ‘Western Desert’ language of Central Australia a single endo lexeme was accompanied by up to eight exolexemes which eased understanding over a wide area (Table 1, based on Hansen 1984). The // indicates the boundary between endo (to the left) and exolexicon (to the right) in a number of desert communities. The word listed first is the preferred or most frequently used synonym within that community. All words listed before the double slash // are primary synonyms used in the community. Words listed after the double slash // are secondary synonyms – known but not used. Other well known language chains have been documented for West Africa and in many parts of the Pacific, including the New Guinea Highlands (Wurm and Laycock 1962), Micronesia (Bender 1971) and Vanuatu (Tryon 1979) we find long chains of interrelated dialects and languages with no clear internal boundaries. As regards

kulupa tjukutjuku lampan (pa) tjuku

lampan (pa) tjuku

tjuku

tjukku

tjuku tjuku

Warburton Ranges

Papunya

Balgo Hills

Christmas Creek

Fitzroy Crossing

La Grange

Jigalong

Wiluna

tjukutjuku

tjukutjuku

tjukutjuku

lampan

wiima//

kulunypa

kulunypa

kulupa

Giles

tjapu

tjap

WORDS

tjapu

tjulitjuli

tjapu

tjukutjuku

tjukutjuku

wiima

nyamanypa

tjulitjuli

wiima//

wiima

tjulitjuli

tjapuwata//

tjulitjuli

tjutamata

tjukunya

tjulyi

tjulitjuli

ngini//

tjulitjuli

yamanypa

tjulyitjulyi

warrku

nyamanypa//, wiima, lampan, warrku, tjumpili

tjapu, wiima, nyamanypa, tjumpili

tjulitjuli, wiima, tjumpili, nyuyi

tjumpili

tjulyi, nyamanypa

tjapuwata// tjumpili, nyamanypa, wiima

nyamanypa kulunypa

tjapuwata

nyuyi

nyamanpa

nyamany (pa) tjapu

tjaputjapu

tjukutjuku// tjulyitjulyi

tjukutjuku

tjimpatjimpa kulunyra//

tjukutjuku

Ernabella

COMMUNITIES

Table 1: Words used to translate English ‘small’ in different communities of Western Desert Language

Linguistic Communities 15

16

Words and Worlds

Micronesia, a group of very closely related languages are spoken all the way from Truk in the east to Tobi in the west. As observed by Bender (1971) ‘there are some indications that it is possible to establish a chain of dialectal connections from one end to the other with all contiguous dialects being mutually intelligible.’ Language boundaries, one might argue, are not so much a linguistic given, but a creation of linguists, administrators and missionaries. Over time, Western and Westernised thinking has become so habituated to the concept of language boundary that it has become to be regarded as a natural fact. The popular perception is reinforced by the large number of language maps and atlases and indeed the entire subdiscipline of dialectology which is predicated on the notion that it is possible to establish locations and boundaries. Dialectologists, for instance, seek to define a dialect2 as being surrounded by bundled isoglosses. This turned out not to be the case, even when the objects of mapping were carefully abstracted languages rather than patterns of speaking (for further discussion see Bailey 1996). It is possible of course to map the political boundaries within which a particular language has official status, for instance, the parts of Belgium where German is officially spoken but this hardly gives an indication where languages are actually used. Political boundaries, the development of national standard languages and changes in speakers’ mobility has greatly affected the viability of language chains, or at least severely curtailed their geographical range. Language chains are among the most endangered linguistic phenomena. 4.2 Focussed versus unfocussed languages Whereas it is widely assumed that a standard grammatical code is a precondition for successful intercommunication, there are a number of documented cases where speakers communicated quite successfully without sharing a grammatical code. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s study of Belizian Creole (1985) documents an astonishing diversity of grammatical and lexical practices among Creole speakers in Colonial British Honduras, shared norms emerged only through ‘an act of identity’ following the establishment of an independent state Belize where the inhabitants of the new nation began to emulate the linguistic habits of their political leaders, a process called focussing. The extent to which languages are focussed depends on the presence and recognition of linguistic role models. One might wish to argue that the absence of clear role models is a contributing factor in the structural disintegration of many traditional languages. Charpentier (2001) for

2 The definition of dialect is primarily a sociopolitical one – “a dialect is a language without an army and navy” is a common pronouncement of sociolinguists. Being labelled a dialect or patois (a Romance form of speech in French-speaking countries) can contribute to endangerment of a way of speaking. There is far less concern for the disappearance of dialects than for the disappearance of languages and there are fewer funds for dialects than for minority languages. A dialect, apart from lacking military hardware, thus has come to mean a language lacking official recognition and funding.

Linguistic Communities

17

instance, brought attention to the fact that demographic and social changes in Vanuatu have greatly diminished the number and authority of older speakers who in the past provided role models, an outcome of the absence of older speakers are less focussed young people’s varieties such as Young People’s Dyirbal described by Schmidt (1985). 4.3 Intergenerationally continuous languages Language transmission is often conceived as a process where children acquire or get handed down the language of their parents. As Hockett (1950) has shown, transmission can take many forms as can continuity over time. Hockett suggests a continuum situation ranging from those where children living in isolated hamlets with adults caretakers to creolization where children construct a new language together with other children. Intergenerational continuity is often reinforced by social institutions, including schools, literacy or language training by elders. The continuity of the Torres Strait language Miriam Mer, for instance, was enforced by language monitoring (Cromwell 1980). In this language ‘mis-speech is virtually never allowed to pass uncorrected. And the corrections of vocabulary, or of tense, or of grammar, may be rendered by anyone present who notices the error’ (Cromwell 1980). That such corrections differ from European schoolteachers’ correcting their pupils’ grammar, however, is evident from the remainder of this quotation. In noticing the error he is making an implicit claim to a more able command of the language, and in noticing and correcting it he makes his claims explicit. But in such acts of correction it is important to note that what is being corrected is the way of speaking. That is, the corrective utterance embodies the sense that the speaker who erred DID NOT SAY WHAT HE MEANT. Case studies of changing sociocultural practices leading to weakening of language transmission can be found in Maffi (ed. 2001). As traditional institutions (language monitors, initiation ceremonies) sustaining intergenerational transmission are becoming less important and as children attend modern schools or missions and are removed from traditional society, intergenerational transmission is becoming problematic. This is particularly evident in the case of difficult, esoteric languages which structural complexity could only be maintained through complex long-term methods. Intergenerational continuity is threatened by deliberate acts of language planning as well. The modernisation of Turkish in the 1920s, for instance, included the replacement of the traditional Arabic script by Roman script and the phasing out of words of Arabic origin and led to a situation where young Turks could no longer access older written documents or indeed speak with members of the older generation (Gallagher 1971). Similar modernization of languages (not always deliberate) can be witnessed around the world. Language shift is the most radical form of intergenerational discontinuity. It is particularly widespread among migrant communities. Neither discouragement nor positive language maintenance policies have prevented second and third generation children of the numerous migrant groups in USA or Australia from giving up their

18

Words and Worlds

ancestral languages and to assimilate with the mainstream English-speech community (see Fishman 1991). Internal migration and in particular urban migration has a similar effect. The speakers of many smaller languages that have migrated to capital cities such as Honiara (Solomon Islands), Bangui (Central African Republic) or Harare (Zimbabwe) increasingly shift to non-traditional languages such as Solomon Pijin, Sango or Town Bemba respectively. 4.4 Esoteric versus exoteric languages An important distinction developed in Thurston’s writings (e.g. 1982, 1987) is that between exoteric and esoteric languages, the former being freely available for intergroup communication, whilst the latter are restricted to a well-defined group who often contribute to its exclusiveness by making it difficult for outsiders to learn. To sustain an esoteric language requires considerable social effort, as it involves formal teaching, monitoring and correcting. The case of the Papuan language Anêm, and its relationship with surrounding Austronesian languages reported by Thurston (1982), is a good illustration. In the past, languages like Japanese and Chinese were esoteric in the sense that it was prohibited to teach them to outsiders. Limited access to the language by outsiders is one of the criteria for esotericity and numerous small languages continue to be kept away from outsiders. As long as there is a viable community of speakers for an esoteric language, this does not affect its survival. However, with out-migration, out-marriage and similar social processes the number of speakers of small esoteric languages can decline to the point where language is no longer viable and threatened with extinction as is happening to the Pitkern-Norfolk language (see Mühlhäusler forthcoming). The limited economic usefulness of an esoteric language combined with the effort it takes to learn them can be a cause for language shift. Exoteric language by contrast, because of their accessibility, usefulness in wider communication and relative lack of structural complexity have a greater survival chance. World languages such as English and Spanish are modern examples of exoteric languages but exoteric languages were also found in earlier days and in traditional context. Malay for long time has been an exoteric language, as has Arabic or Wolof. Formerly esoteric languages have become exoteric languages with the consequence of deliberate intervention by European missionaries and Governments, Guarani in Paraguay, Kâte and Yabêm in Papua New Guinea or Tetúm in East Timor being examples. Closely related to the notion of exoteric language is that of lingua franca. The historical origin of this term is a medieval Mediterranean trade language (Arends 1998) used as the language of intercommunication between Crusaders and the people of the Middle East, the language of the sugar plantation of Cyprus and the language of the trade centres of the area. A lingua franca in a wider sense is typically used as a second language by speakers of many other languages over a wide area. Because of its function as an auxiliary language it tends to be structurally and lexically less complex than the natively spoken language it derives from (e.g. English as a foreign language or Odgen’s Basic English (1968) when compared with English) but remains mutually intelligible with it.

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Structured complexity and mutual intelligibility are of course gradient phenomena. There are, for instance, a number of varieties of Swahili in East Africa ranging from vernacular Swahili in coastal Tanzania to highly reduced and restricted Pidgin varieties spoken in Katanga and the interior of the continent. English, as a lingua franca of Singapore, again comprises of a continuum of varieties. 4.5 Pidgins Pidgin languages come into being when speakers of different languages need to communicate about a restricted range of topics and when neither party wishes and/or is allowed to become fully competent in the other party’s native language. The classical pidgin context is that of plantations, set up in the colonial era which employed slaves or labourers from numerous language backgrounds, who, in order to communicate among themselves and with their plantations owners and overseers, had to develop a common language. Pidgin languages by definition are second languages, structurally and functionally restricted and not mutually intelligible with the language from which they derive most of their lexicon. The various Pidgin Englishes of the Pacific (Queensland, New Guinea, Vanuatu etc.) are not intelligible to speakers of ‘standard’ English. They have developed their own communicative norms which draw on universal principles of language simplification, borrowing from a range of languages and diffusion of Pidgin conventions around the globe. The observed absence of shared grammar has prompted Silverstein to state (1971) that the equation of ‘linguistic community’ with ‘people with the same grammar’ seems to be too strong here. The complexity of a Pidgin is closely related to the communicative functions it fulfils and they are sustained not by native speakers transmitting them from parent to children but by the continuation of the conditions that brought them into being. The military Pidgin English of Vietnam and Korea disappeared with the social context in which they were developed and Vietnamese Pidgin French (Tay Boi) ceased to be used once the French colonisers left Vietnam. Pidgin Portuguese, once spoken almost universally in South East Asian trade, disappeared when English traders became dominant. The survival of colonial Pidgin languages depends on their users putting them to new uses. Pidgin English in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu have become the principal languages of intercommunication of modern independent states and have been recognised as official languages. Increasingly this principle appears to apply to many non-Pidgins as well. In specific circumstances Pidgins can become primary or native languages, a process called Creolization. Compared with Pidgins, Creoles are spoken as native languages, are compatible in terms of structural and lexical complexity with other full languages. Contexts in which creolization occurs include plantations where children elaborated the only useful means of intercommunication, their parents’ broken Pidgin, in orphanages of remote locations (such as Tayo in New Caledonia or Unserdeutsch in Papua New Guinea) or most recently under the impact of rapid urbanisation in countries such as Papua New Guinea or the Solomons.

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In as much as human history is full of catastrophic events (invasions, slavery, displacement) there are probably a very large number of languages with a Creole ancestry and the number of known Creoles (as listed in Holm 1988) of about 100, is a very conservative estimate. Because Creoles are often perceived to be inferior versions of a lexically related more prestigious language e.g. Seychellois or Haitian Creole vis à vis French, they are susceptible to language shift or gradual merger (socalled post-Creole continuum) with their lexifier language. 4.6 Koines This term derives from the variety of Greek spoken by settlers from different areas in the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean (best known as the language of the Modern Testament). The term has since been extended to many similar situations where dialect mixing occurs in new settlements, for instance the German settlers of Eastern Europe or Namibia, or in the non-traditional Aboriginal settlements of Australia (Mühlhäusler and Amery 1996). In discussing this term, Siegel (1985) draws attention to the following points: A Koine is the result of mixing between language subsystems that are either mutually intelligible or share the same superimposed standard language. Koineization, unlike pidginization, is typically a slow and gradual process. The social correlate of Koine development is sustained intensive contacts and gradual assimilation of social groups. Thus, although some of the linguistic consequences of koineization can be similar to those identified in Pidgin development (for example, simplification of inflectional morphology), Koines do not involve the drastic reduction characteristic of early pidgin development. There is some overlap with the notion of lingua franca. In contrast to the latter Koines are spoken as native and/or primary languages. The development of Koines goes hand in hand with social displacement and social reconstruction and an increase in urbanisation and social change in the 21st century is likely to lead to the development of further Koines. Their long-term viability however is not secure. 4.7 Ausbau and modern languages In times of rapid social technological development languages tend to lag behind and are not capable of adapting quickly to new requirements. In such a situation they can either be abandoned or marginalised or made to meet the new requirements by deliberate human interference. The term Ausbau, coined by the German linguist Kloss (1967), refers to the general process of extension. Typical examples are provided by languages chosen by Christian Missionaries as media of conversion. Missionary extension typically consists of adding Christian terminology and words used in education and life on a mission station (e.g. relating to food, hygiene etc). The small Melanesian language Mota, for instance, was extended by a number of professional

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linguists belonging to the Melanesian Mission (such as Codrington and Palmer, 1896) and elevated the state of the language of missionization and education. Modern languages are a special case of Ausbau. The modernisation process is designed to make them intertranslatable with modern European nation languages. Indonesian, for example has undergone an extension process of modernisation (over 400,000 new words have been added since 1947) as have Swahili, Pilipino and Afrikaans. Whilst in principle all languages can be modernised, in practice it has been a very selective process. Because of the cost of language planning, modernisation is governed by considerations of economy of scale. Only Indonesian and a few large provincial languages in Indonesia underwent modernisation, all the other 400+ languages of the archipelago remained largely unaffected and unmodernised. Once modernised, a language tends to have considerable economic advantages and speakers on non-modernised languages can find it desirable either to adopt them as a second language or switch to them. Extension which does not involve dependency on European language models is being attempted in a number of instances, where indigenous languages have gained greater political status. A well known case is that of Maori (Harlow 1993). 4.8 Abstand languages This term meaning ‘distance language’ again was coined by Kloss (1967). It implies deliberate human interference, not so much with the aim of making the language cope with the modern world but in order to distinguish it from another related language with which speakers do not wish to identify. Switsertütsch for instance, was developed as a reaction against the German spoken in Hitler Germany, Norwegian as a reaction against the language of the Danish colonisers, Bosnian as a reaction against Serbia, but Hindi and Urdu became different languages because of the different religious affiliations of Hindustani speakers. The wish not to speak the language of a group one does not identify with is a very strong one and there is a sizeable body of literature (e.g. Laycock 1975) documenting ‘naïve language planning’ of the absolute type in traditional society. Where 90% of Indigenous Australians no longer speak an indigenous language, and whilst most of them can speak standard Australian English, Aborigines nevertheless have developed a number of Aboriginal Englishes such as Koori English of the East Coast or Nunga English of South Australia, to signal their distance from mainstream white society. An extreme case of Abstand language are secret languages or cants, such as Shelta (developed by Irish travellers), and varieties of English such as Backslang and perhaps Rastfarian English. 4.9 Artificial and planned languages Whilst languages such as English are referred to as ‘natural’ languages and contrasted with artificial languages (eg. Esperanto) the distinction is not an absolute one. Deliberate human involvement in lexicon and grammar are documented in virtually all languages (Laycock & Mühlhäusler 1990) and in most national languages

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(see below) the extent of human agency can be very considerable. The documentation of what Laycock has labelled ‘naïve language planning’ is very patchy. The main raisons d’être in traditional societies includes, taboo, secret or initiation ceremonies, purposes or language play (ludlings). Like Pidgins they are brought into existence by special social circumstances and disappear once external conditions change. Franklin (1992) for instance has documented the disappearance of the Pandanus gathering variety of Kewa Papua New Guinea, and Hale (1992) has analysed the disappearing Damin register of the indigenous Australian Lardil language. There is great urgency to document and analyse similar special languages around the world. Entirely planned languages were developed mainly in Europe following the Enlightenment. The objective of their creators being to have a language capable of expressing enlightened philosophical or scientific ideas, to have a single language for worldwide communication either in addition to or as a replacement of existing languages. Structurally, artificial languages are either of the a priori type, created from scratch on the basis of philosophical principles of classification or naming (Libert 2000), or a posteriori languages, simplified and enhanced versions of an existing language or languages. The best known example of this latter category is Esperanto. In the recent past the idea of developing a single artificial language for the European Union has been revived. A general problem with artificial world languages is the underlying assumption that a single language can cope equally well with all aspects of the world, that it could in principle be replacive of other languages. 4.10 Sign and other non-verbal languages Speech typically is accompanied by gestures which in most societies are mainly improvised in context. In some special conditions highly codified gesture systems can develop(substitute languages), however. The sign languages of deaf communities are an example, next to the better documented sign varieties of large modern languages such as English German or French, there probably have been many others that go undocumented and may disappear. Washabaugh (1986) has demonstrated, with the example of the sign Creole of the small Caribbean Island of San Andres, the relevance of such languages to both linguistic theory and to an understanding of human communication. Kendon (1988) offers the most comprehensive account of sign language in a particular linguistic ecology, that of indigenous Australia. Most of them were semantically highly sophisticated sign languages used as languages for special domains or functions and as languages of intergroup communication. Sign language as full substitute of verbal speech once were widely used. Few of them are properly recorded and most of the remaining ones appear to be endangered. Other non-verbal forms of communication such as whistle languages, drum or slitgong languages share their fate and observationally adequate accounts are urgently needed.

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4.11 Independent versus connected languages In the Western view, languages are seen as objects that are clearly separate from the social and natural environment they are spoken in. As such they can be transported and they can be acquired by new groups of speakers. By contrast, many traditional languages are regarded by their speakers as being inseparably linked with land, customs, belief systems and family relations. The link to the land of some Australian indigenous languages is such that one has to speak a different language when moving to a different part of the territory (Sutton 1991). Correct use of some languages is only possible for members of the language community, for instance in pronoun choice or when using kinship terms, both of which can require a knowledge of how speakers, persons spoken about and persons spoken to, are related to one another, a practice which can only be upheld in small tightly-knit communities. With migration and changing patterns of land use the connections that languages have with their environment are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. It has been argued, for instance, that the large scale loss of Australian indigenous languages was precipitated by the removal of most groups from their traditional habitat. 4.12 Endemic versus exotic languages The widespread view that languages are independent entities, accounts for the scarcity of these labels in sociolinguistic literature. There are now findings however which suggest the coincidence of tribal and language boundaries and local natural ecologies (Tindale 1974) and a recent study by Nettle 1998, 1999 summarised in Glausiusz (1997) suggests a direct correlation between language size and rainfall. Geographically spread-out languages are encountered typically in dry areas whilst small languages predominantly occur in high-rainfall areas. The unstoppable spread of English (a high-rainfall language) over the entire globe under this view suggests problems for discourses about management of resources in desert areas. Mühlhäusler (1996) argues that the hypothesis of adaptation can be tested most conveniently with evidence from recently occupied ‘desert’ islands such as Pitkern, Palmerston Creole or Mauritian Creole. As languages get transported around the globe, the fit between them and the environment in which they are spoken, of necessity, weakens. As linguistic adaptation to a new environment takes several hundred years (e.g. the development of complex plant classification in Maori after the arrival of Eastern Polynesian with a much less complex system in New Zealand), this misfit is likely to be a prolonged one and may turn out to be an important task for language planners. Detailed studies of how languages are adapted to and help preserve the biological diversity in their area of currency are given by the contributors to Maffi (ed. 2001). In her introduction Maffi observes (following Harmon 1996) that biological megadiversity closely correlates with linguistic diversity. The conclusion most contributors to Maffi’s volume arrive at that the loss of large numbers of endemic languages will result in the loss of biodiversity.

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4.13 National languages The concept of nation and nation state is only a few hundred years old and has become worldwide applicable only in the wake of decolonisation and modernisation from the middle of the 20th century. Nation states, as Wollock (2001) points out, initially took pride in their linguistic diversity. The idea that political units and states should be inhabited by a culturally and linguistically homogenous population is an idea that developed during the French Revolution. Before this event speakers of many languages (Occitan, Catalan, Flemish, Alamanic, Basque and French) were spoken in France and the concept of a French community was defined by shared laws, shared religion and a common ruler. The ideal of a single monolingual French nation took more than 200 years to become realised. French as a national language today is the dominant medium of all public discourse but other languages still continue to be used by minority groups in other domains. The creation of monolingual nation states first occurred in other European states such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy – though there are no nation states in which other languages are not also spoken and a number of modern nation states such as Belgium, Switzerland and Finland continue to be officially multilingual. The idea of a single national language has been converted into policy in many former European colonies – in most instances national language means the most privileged and most modernised language rather than the only language. However, the trend toward dominant monolingualism established first in France can also be witnessed elsewhere: Modern China, Malaysia, Indonesia as well as former colonial languages such as Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese have acquired a large number of native speakers (or monolingual) of the chosen national language. 4.14 Tribal languages This term is used as synonymous with ‘indigenous language’ and ‘vernacular’ i.e. unwritten, unstandardised forms of speech spoken by single communities in small political units such as extended families, tribes or villages. The vast majority of the worlds’ languages falls into this group. More than a third of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people and in some regions (e.g. Melanesia) the average number of speakers is even less. The number of tribal languages has decreased dramatically since the European conquest of the world and estimates such as these by Lizarraldi (2001) for South America underline this. Of the 1,200 tribal languages spoken there in 1492 only 600 remained in 1940 and the number has since shrunk to about 400. 4.15 Some generalisations The main aim of this section has been to show the variety of phenomena bearing the label language. Languages, I have tried to show, differ in their political status, ability to be used in modern technological environments, range of functions and domains and last, but not least, in having recognised boundaries and domains and a name.

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In whatever sense human languages are equal, they are certainly not equal in regard to their visibility. There is a clear danger that the best described, mapped and labelled languages have a better chance of being maintained. Ironically, this often means that languages that have been described or otherwise standardised or objectified by Europeans are the ones whose survival chances are greatest and that genuinely different ways of speaking are highly endangered. There is a clear parallelism with the so-called charismatic species in wildlife protection: whereas many millions of dollars are spent on koala research in Australia, very little money has been made available to document and maintain Australia’s weevil population. But arguably, the survival of a diversity of near invisible weevil species is ecologically more important than that of the koala. Many ways of speaking which, on structural and/or functional grounds could well have been recognised as languages in actual fact are not – because of political circumstances, lack of folk sentiment, or lack of Abstand and Ausbau. In Europe, this includes languages such has Alsatian, Asturian, Bavarian, Corsican, Flemish, Francique, Istro-Romanian, Yutish, Karelian, Low Saxon, Tsakonian and many others. In some instances, the ways of speaking have been labelled ‘dialect’ or ‘patois’, in other instances there is little metalinguistic awareness of their existence. What I shall do in the following section is explore how different ways of speaking are employed side-by-side by groups of people. Just as the term language applies to a range of phenomena, so do the terms language community, speech community, multilingual community etc. Again, the multitude of combinations must be seen as functional responses to particular communicative requirements, not dysfunctional oddities. I shall employ Haugen’s (1972) and other ecological parameters to identify a number of types of possible languages or language ecologies. The term ‘language ecology’ is used as a cover term for a range of phenomena, some of which in the past have been labelled language communities or speech communities. The main difference between an ecological and closed sociolinguistic approach is that the ecological approach places greater emphasis on the environmental support systems and pays greater attention to the adaptability of different language ecologies. It would seem useful first to say a few words about the concept of speech communities used in sociolinguistics.

THE MEANING OF TRIBAL LANGUAGES IN INDIA The Indian tribes are scheduled as per Article 342 of the Constitution by the President and the Parliament. They do not form a neat homogenous socialcultural category. The concept of tribe in India is thus an administrative, judicial, and political. The scheduled tribes constitute 623 varied communities. Languages spoken by these scheduled communities are considered ‘tribal

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languages’. There is no linguistic definition of tribal language/s. It is the tribal languages that contribute to the vast and rich linguistic diversity of India. The tribal languages belong to five distinct language groups pertaining to distinct five language families represented in India such as Andamanese, AustroAsiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Tibeto-Burman. Though tribal languages are spoken all over the country, languages belonging to a particular family tend to be concentrated in a defined geographical area. Thus Northeast by TibetoBurman, East-Center by Austro-Asiatic (Munda and Mon-Khmer), Western India by Indo-Aryan, Southern India by Dravidian, and Andaman Islands by Andamanese languages are represented. As these languages are not scheduled languages, ethnolinguistic minority status induces a negative attitude toward language loyalty. Anxiety to be associated with the superior masses discourages people to declare their traditional languages as mother tongues. In reality the tribals speak and use their traditional languages in the home domain but refuse to acknowledge this. This is especially true of many of the urban Munda and the Dravidian tribes. The ‘claimed mother tongues’ that are reported in various census reports at best, are foster mother tongues. Despite the reported language shift most of our rural tribals (barring Andamanese) do not really fit in the moulds of ‘terminal speakers’ or ‘semispeakers’. Instead, some of them may be considered ‘healthy speakers’. Those in the rural Northeast and in rural Jharkhand may be considered the thriving speakers. The two forces, retention and shift, coexist within the same language group, e.g. while the urban tribals of the Munda family and those of the Dravidian family are seen as easy to shift, rural tribes of the same language families prefer to maintain their indigenous languages. Tribals belonging to the Munda group are known to be the original inhabitants of India. Bilingualism among tribals is 50% more than the national average bilingualism. Most of the Northeastern and Central urban Tribals are bilinguals in Hindi which they use for inter-tribal communication, or in other lingua franca originating out of the mixture of two or three languages of the region such as Sadari among Munda speakers and Nagamese, Nefamese, Chakesang (these languages are contact languages created out of the convergence of two or three languages. Thus Nagamese is convergence of Naga and Assamese, while Chakesang is constituted of drawing structures of three languages distinct languages) as well as in English among the educated Tibeto-Burman speakers. The conflict between the mother tongue and the other tongue is greater, deeper and more terse in Central India than that which exists in the Northeast. Anvita Abbi Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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5. The notion of language community and speech community The problems encountered in defining language are again found when it comes to defining speech and language communities. As the etymology of the term ‘community’ suggests, its members have something in common but what it is that members of a speech community have in common and how many properties have to be shared for a community to come into existence is far from clear. Linguists such as Gumperz (1972) and Fishman (1971) have argued that “A speech community is one, all of whose members share at least a single speech variety and the norms for its appropriate use” (Fishman 1971). Other linguists by contrast deemphasise the notion of uniformity of language and put in their place shared evaluation of patterns of language use (e.g. Labov 1972). By the first criterion there would seem to be a single community of all of those who can speak English or French as the first or second (and possibly foreign language), by the second criteria, because the social evaluation of different varieties of English varies greatly, one is dealing with a large number of communities. Labov (1972) notes that the assumptions of dialectologists are problematic because of the presence of variation within speech communities. Extreme forms of variation are found in some Post-creole communities and in Kupwar-type settings. The Indian village of Kupwar (described by Gumperz and Wilson 1971) is located in Sangli District Maharashtra, approximately seven miles north of the Mysore border. It has a population of 3,000 and four languages. Village lands are controlled largely by two land-owning and cultivating groups, Kannada-speaking Jains, who form the majority, and Urdu-speaking Moslems. There are furthermore, large contingents of Kannada-speaking Lingayats – largely craftsmen, Marathi-speaking untouchables and other landless labourers, as well as some Telugu-speaking rope-makers. In spite of the differences in language use, Kupwar can be defined as a community in Labov’s sense because the evaluation of language use is shared by all members of this village though not by outsiders. What leads to shared norms is constant interaction. Milroy’s (1980: 20) use of a network model provides further insights. She distinguishes two types, as in Diagrams 1 and 2 where the individual whose network is being studied is shown by a star, and other people in the network by dots. Contact between individuals is shown by a line. The two networks are said to be of high density and low density respectively. Milroy then observes “it is possible for one network to be described as more or less dense than another, rather than in absolute terms as open or closed. Additionally, Blom and Gumperz comment that the contents of the network ties which bind members of the elite to ‘local team’ people is ‘largely impersonal, focussing around single tasks.” In contrast, most local team people ‘live, marry and earn their livelihood among others of their own kind’ (p. 433). Thus, not only are local team networks dense, but each individual is likely to be linked to others in more than one capacity – as a co-employee, a kinsman and a friend, for example. This kind of network tie may be said to be multiplex, or many stranded, and to contrast with the uniplex ties of the elite who tend to associate with the local people in a single capacity only.

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X

Diagram 1. High-density personal network structure: X is the focal point of the network

X

Diagram 2. Low-density personal network structure: X is the focal point of the network

Traditional lifestyles strongly correlate with closed multiplex networks and such networks provide a home for a multitude of small endemic languages. Urbanisation, social and geographical mobility and information technology, by contrast promote open networks which call for larger, even international languages: one can witness a corresponding process of the shrinkage of closed networks (they are becoming restricted to communication with in-families, tribes and other highly-knit social structures), and a steady growth in the importance of open networks. In as much as the village has been the typical locus for closed network communication, the notion of a global village seems absurd. Kreckel (1980) comments on the ‘undesirable effects of heterodynamic [=open network] communication for presupposed common knowledge may easily have no common basis at all.’ Given the problem of pinning down what a speech community is, it would at first sight seem desirable to start with clearly bounded units such as states, provinces and urban communities and ask: what languages and what relationships between languages are encountered within such units. This, in fact, is what many sociolinguists have opted to do (a process referred to as the dialectological approach) when describing phenomena such as diglossia (see below). However,

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applying labels such as speech community, Laycock (1979) has pointed out, can bring with it other problems: Extensive multilingualism has important consequences for theories of language contact and language classification. One major effect is the erasure or blurring of linguistic boundaries. We can distinguish three types of linguistic areas with definable boundaries: (1) a communication area, which is the area in which a speaker or community can still manage to communicate, by the use of any languages known; (2) a lectal or language currency area, which is the area in which a single language is effective for communication purposes, (3) a language area, which is the area in which a particular language can be said to be native – that is, it is the first learnt and/or the primary language. Linguistic maps usually feature type 3, which is the hardest to define satisfactorily, and which is coterminous with types 1 and 2 unless multilingualism is present. However, it is precisely the boundaries of 3 that are made fuzzy, or are erased by, multilingualism. A way of defining community that does not rely on pre-established boundaries might be to examine the key metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) that different groups of people live by. Those dominant in mainstream Anglo culture (time is money, argument is war) are not shared by members of many other cultures. The Australian and British metaphor of politics as a game of cricket (to be played according to rules on a level playing field) is foreign to most of the ‘foreign’ politicians that British politicians are dealing with and the lack of shared metaphors could be one of the reasons for the lack of mutual understanding. That the notion that speaking the same language needs to correlate with other social categories is questioned by writers such as Rigsby and Sutton (n.d.) who argue that speech community is not a primary social term but a secondary construct. Their own data, gathered during many years of fieldwork in Northern Queensland suggest that ‘residence groups, task groups (such as ritual participants) and regional political groupings are formed largely independent of linguistic affiliation’ (p. 35). The notion that one language equals one culture and the derived view that the loss of, say, 100 languages implies the loss of 100 cultural and philosophical systems thus would seem highly questionable. The non-agreement between language and culture can be illustrated in the socalled developed world by the existence of pluricentric standard languages with several standard varieties (see Clyne 1985). Examples of these include Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French and Spanish, all of which have official status in a number of nation states with different political and cultural agendas. Belonging to the same speech community does not exclude hostility or almost total non-cooperation, as can be seen from the examples of Korean in North and South Korea, Mandarin in Mainland China and Taiwan or German in former East and West Germany. The case of Moldavian and Galician illustrate that there can be considerable disagreement

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among speakers as to whether they are speaking a language with its own norms or a variety of Romanian or Portuguese and in the case of Valencian vis à vis Catalan this has led to considerable social conflict. In view of the difficulties with the definition of communities, the notion of language ecology would seem preferable, particularly as it supplements information about the use of different languages as information about the wider ecological factors (including discourses) that sustain such practices. One has to remind oneself of the etymological roots of the term ‘ecology,’ i.e. Greek oikos, ‘house’ or ‘home.’ Haugen, whose ecolinguistic questions were quoted at the beginning of this paper, very much looked at the linguistic practices of the inhabitants of communities bounded by sociopolitical boundaries and this approach would seem appropriate only for nation states and similar modern entities. The question of the relationships within a house, what relationships between its inhabitants make it a home and a sociolinguistic characterisation of its inhabitants are important. However, Haugen uses the notion of ecology as a heuristic metaphor without suggesting that language can itself be an ecological phenomenon. In discussing the notion of endemic language I have suggested that languages can also be seen as ecologically adapted to particular natural environments and this suggestion can be extended to the hypothesis that particular language ecologies in turn are adapted to particular natural conditions, that, for instance the seemingly excessive multilingualism in some parts of the world is a response to the need for various types of cooperation needed for survival and management in a particular environment. Healthy ecologies are characterised by the presence of a large number of mutually beneficial interrelationships and a relatively small proportion of competitive and/or parasitic ones. They are also defined by functional diversity. In the past, healthy language ecologies were the norm but over the last few hundred years or so, there has been a marked shift to unbalanced and unhealthy ecologies, characterised by an increase of internal competition and a reduction of diversity and, in the domain of language, a dramatic loss of the connections between languages, speakers and their natural habitat. What defines language ecologies remains to be explored, and the sections that follow have to be read against the background of an important ecological principle. What keeps one ecology healthy and stable may destroy another one. The support system for different language ecologies can be very different and must be determined case by case. An overview of writings on the psychology and sociology of language ecologies is given by Fill (1993). The parameters determining ecological processes in language and society listed by Fill include: • • • •

status and intimacy, similarity and difference of language in contact, number of competing languages, cultural, religious and economic factors,

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frequency of intermarriage, functional distribution, degree of codification, external interventions.

In my view there are a number of additional parameters that need to be considered: • • • • • • •

whether languages are endemic or exotic to an ecology, the degree of esotericity (closed in-group language), the degree of vitality of the languages in an ecology, whether languages are ‘packaged’ with or disconnected from the ecology, continuity (e.g. dialect or chains) or discontinuity (abrupt boundaries), named or unnamed i.e. degree of recognition by speakers and outsiders), types of solutions for intergroup communication with outside groups (bilingualism, lingua francas, Pidgins).

6. Some aspects of ecological support systems In what follows I shall consider some of the external factors that impinge on the nature of language ecologies, factors such as territory, speaker numbers, etc. 6.1 Language and territory The 6,000+ languages spoken around the world are not evenly distributed. Neither is there a simple formula for the relationship between language and topological space nor is there one for language and speaker numbers. In some parts of the world a relatively small number of languages is spoken by a large number of people (Europe and North America today), in others many languages are spoken by a few people each. In Papua New Guinea 800+ languages are said to be used by about 4 million speakers, far fewer speakers than in the past, whereas in New Zealand, a country of a comparable size only one language, Maori, was spoken at the time the first European colonisers arrived. The reasons for these differences have been traditionally given as temporal factors. Linguistic diversification takes time (e.g. 1,000 years time period is conventionally used as a rough guide for one language to become two). Thus, the difference between PNG with 40,000+ years of human habitation and New Zealand with only about 1200 years is adduced as a reason for the difference in language numbers. Similarly, the large number of dialects of British English contrasts with a very small number of dialects in North American English and an even smaller one in Australian and New Zealand English. Next to time, contact with other languages is given as a reason, as new languages can develop out of language contact in a relatively short time, only a few decades in the case of Pidgins and Creoles, for instance. Both factors together would account for the fact that there are a large number of different languages in Arnhem Land,

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Northern Australia, the first part settled by human beings and the one closest to South East Asia with whose inhabitants there have been several periods of contact. By contrast human habitation of the Southern parts of Australia is far more recent and contacts with outside groups were rare or non-existent. Time and contact alone are insufficient to explain all aspects of linguistic diversity. Laycock (1982) adds deliberate human choice as a further motive. Speaking about the situation in Melanesia he argues: In view of all the above, it is possible to formulate a hypothesis about Melanesian linguistic diversity. Migration into the small independent, or semi-independent, communities, with, often, the same or very similar languages. Isolation and normal linguistic change played their part in the splitting of these communities unhampered by pressures towards convergence. The process was accelerated by contact between communities of quite different linguistic backgrounds, by warfare (and subsequent dispersal of communities), by cross-cutting migrations, and by technical innovation. Once the process of diversification was well under way, diversity had advantages as well as disadvantages, in clearly distinguishing friend, acquaintance, trading-partner, and foe; and with this consciousness came an attitude, I believe, that the community was further divided. In other words, I suggest that Melanesian linguistic diversity is not merely the by-product of accidents of history and geography, but is in large measure a partly conscious reaction, on the part of the Melanesians themselves, to their environment and social conditions. Ecolinguistics, as discussed under the heading of ‘Endemic Languages’, has added external environmental reasons. The size of a language coincides with the size of the ecological borders in which it is spoken. Highly diversified complex ecological conditions such as in rainforest areas coincide with high linguistic diversity. The linguistically most complex areas are Melanesia, the Amazon and West Africa. The number of languages spoken in desert areas and the Arctic, on the other hand, are relatively small. Areas with high linguistic diversity are also areas with a high degree of multilingualism, with as many as 4+ languages spoken in traditional Melanesia and up to a dozen in tropical Northern Australia. Linguistic diversity is often linked to geographical isolation but this turns out not to be a very reliable parameter. Islands, for instance, have traditionally been associated with isolation but as the many contributors to the Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas (Wurm, Mühlhäusler & Tryon 1996) have demonstrated, contacts between most of the islands of the Pacific was relatively intense and the only genuinely isolated islands of the area were Easter Island and possibly Hawaii. Rivers also isolate populations but, on the contrary, provide access and contact. The isolated languages of distant mountain villages are mainly a discursive category rather than a linguistic fact. The largest languages in Papua New Guinea, for instance, are located in the rugged terrain of the New Guinea highlands. Genetic research (e.g. Terrell 1986) confirms that human groups rarely remain isolated over extended periods of time.

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There is, however, an interesting relationship between some factors of the physical terrain and language continuity. Languages located in areas subject to natural disasters such as drought, floodwaves, volcanic eruptions etc. are more vulnerable to change and extinction than other languages. Thurston (1982) has illustrated this for the languages spoken on the dangerous coastline of Eastern New Britain, and the unreliability of water supply in parts of the Pacific has in the past lead to the extinction of populations and their languages on many islands. Medical disasters such as epidemics can also disrupt linguistic continuity. Stross (1975) has shown how speakers of Tzeltal in Yukatan are affected by frequent epidemics which lead to the decline of individual dialects and the rise of others, promoting frequent changes in the direction of language development. Introduced diseases and their roles in changes in language ecologies remain to be fully documented. Australian Indigenous languages, as a response to smallpox and influenza, often became non-viable as their speaker numbers declined, or as speakers fled to different parts of the continent where they mixed with other groups. Hottentot and several Melanesian languages experienced a similar decline and the spread of AIDS and other pandemics throughout the developing world is likely seriously to affect the viability of many smaller languages. 6.2 Speaker distribution This concept relates on the one hand to the degree of contacts between members of a language community and, on the other, the density of such contacts. Contact between languages involves physical proximity as a necessary but not a sufficient reason for mutual influence. Contact together with time tends to promote similarity between languages no matter what their original history was. It tends to lead to the development of Sprachbunds where languages from several families display common traits not found in members of the same families spoken outside. The already mentioned Kupwar situation can be called a mini-Sprachbund. The languages of the Balkan again have become structurally and semantically similar over time with Romanian in spite of its romance origins, being more similar with surrounding languages such as Greek or Bulgarian than Latin or Spanish.

BILINGUALISM, MULTILINGUALISM AND MIND DEVELOPMENT Languages in contact, whether it is bilingualism or multilingualism are an integral part of human behaviour. Situations of languages in contact have always outnumbered monolingual situations, but they will constantly increase with globalisation and increasing population movements due to migration and greater social mobility, with the universal spread of education and the need for all human societies to have access to modern information technology. By “languages in contact” we mean the use of two or more distinct linguistic codes in interpersonal

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and inter-group relations as well as the psychological state of an individual who uses more than one language. The distinction between bilingualism and multilingualism refers to the number of languages involved in the contact situation: multilingualism generally refers to any situation involving two or more languages, whereas bilingualism refers to a contact between only two languages. A more important distinction is however made between societal and individual bi- or multilingualism. The concepts of bilingualism and multilingualism refer to the state of a linguistic community in which at least two languages are in contact with the result that more than one linguistic code can be used in the same interaction and that a number of individuals master more than one language; it includes the concept of bilinguality or individual bilingualism. In the present discussion, we will use the term bilinguality to refer to bilingual and multilingual individuals, as so far there is no evidence that bilinguals and multilinguals show different behaviour patterns. Definitions of bilingualism At first sight the concept of individual bilingualism seems easy to define. In the layman’s view a bilingual person is somebody who either speaks two languages as native speakers or has an almost native-like command of a second language in addition to the command of his mother tongue. According to Webster’s dictionary, a bilingual is defined as “having or using two languages especially as spoken with the fluency characteristic of a native speaker” and bilingualism as “the constant oral use of two languages”. However, scholars in bilingualism do not agree on a single definition. Bloomfield (1935) defines bilingualism as “the native-like control of two languages”. In contradistinction to this definition of “perfect bilinguals”, Macnamara (1967) suggests that a bilingual is anyone who possesses a minimal competence in one of the four language skills, listening, reading, speaking and writing in a language different from its mother tongue. Between these two extremes there is a large array of definitions; Titone (1972), for example, defines bilingualism as the individual’s capacity to speak a second language following its concepts and structures rather than paraphrasing the mother tongue. These definitions, ranging from a native-like competence in two languages to a minimum proficiency in a second language, raise a number of theoretical and methodological questions. First, they lack precision: they do not specify what is meant by native-like competence, nor by minimal proficiency, nor by following the concepts and structures of a language. Second, they refer to a single dimension, i.e. proficiency in both languages. According to Hamers & Blanc (1983), however, bilingualism and bilinguality are multi-dimensional concepts. Bilinguality can be described using the following dimensions: according to competence in both languages a distinction can be made between balanced (competence in LA = competence in LB ) and dominant (competence in LA > or

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< than competence in LB ) bilinguals ; according to cognitive organisation between compound (language labels in LA and LB correspond to one single concept) and coordinate (each language label corresponds to a different concept) bilinguals. In terms of age of acquisition a distinction is made between simultaneous (the two languages are acquired during the language acquisition period; LA and LB are both the child’s mother tongues) and consecutive (L2 is acquired after the child has developed a competence in L1) bilinguality. In consecutive bilinguality a further distinction is made between childhood (L2 before 10–11), adolescent (L2 between 11 and 17 years) and adulthood (L2 after the age of 17) bilinguality. According to the presence or the absence of a community of L2 speakers, a distinction is made between endogenous (both speech communities are present) and exogenous (only one speech communities is present) bilinguality. According to the relative status of the languages a distinction is made between additive (both language are highly valorised; bilingual development will enhance cognitive development) and subtractive (L1 is devalorised, leading to cognitive disadvantages). Bilinguals can also be described in terms of their cultural identity: bilinguality can be described as bicultural, monocultural or deculturated (ambiguous membership and anomic identity). Bilinguistic development Early biographies on bilingual children (Ronjat 1913; Leopold, 1939–1949) already pointed to a harmonious development of the bilingual child and indicated that his linguistic development is comparable to that of a monolingual child. More recent studies however permit us to be more precise in their comparisons and point out that the bilingual child does not only compare favourably with his monolingual counterpart but displays also some specific behaviours. At the preverbal stage, it seems that infants as young as four months, raised in a multilingual environment, discriminate better between familiar and nonfamiliar phonemes and intonation patterns than their monolingual counterparts. There is a general agreement that the bilingual child produces his first word at the same time as a monolingual infant and that at the holophrastic stage he uses words from his two languages. The receptive vocabulary of monolingual and bilingual children is comparable; bilingual children produce less vocabulary in each language, but if the lexical items in the two languages are taken together production is comparable; bilingual children do not have translation equivalents for all their lexicon but monolingual and bilingual children’s conceptual vocabularies have similar sizes. How do grammatical structures evolve in bilinguistic development? From the available data it appears that certain aspects of linguistic development follow a monolingual pattern closely while others do not. Some studies (Swain 1972) mention developmental delay, others (Meisel 1990) give some evidence for a

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more precocious development of bilingual children, while still others (Padilla & Liebman 1975) conclude that the acquisition of the two languages follows a monolingual pattern. Mixing is mentioned in all biographies and studies on bilinguistic development. The majority of mixings are lexical in nature, with nouns as the most frequently substituted words. Mixing may also occur at other levels (est-ce que you sleep here?). Infant and adult mixing follow different patterns and there is also a consensus that syntactic categories do not appear at random in mixed elements. Although probably all bilingual children mix codes, this mixing occurs with a low frequency (from 2% to 6.5%), tending to decrease with age. What role mixing plays in bilinguistic acquisition is still little known, but its less frequent use as the child grows older may be a manifestation of his improved capacity to keep his two languages separate. Not all mixing must be attributed to a lack of competence; mixed utterance might express the intended meaning more adequately. Translation is also an integral part of bilinguistic development. Besides using translation spontaneously, the bilingual child requests translation equivalents in the other language. The onset of awareness of two systems is evidenced around the second birthday: two-year old children will assign words to each parent’s repertoire and request translations for them. This is considered as proof that language awareness develops at an early age. The relation between language and mind Several researchers have suggested that language and mind are closely intermingled. In 1956, Whorf suggested that language moulds thought, and although this hypothesis in its extreme form is no longer accepted, most scholars do agree that language and thought are not completely independent from each other. Childhood bilinguality does not develop in isolation from other developmental aspects but interacts with them. Whether one considers that language plays an important role in the development of thought or whether both are seen as developing independently from each other will influence the extent to which bilinguality is considered as a relevant factor for the development of cognitive processes. At the present time most child psychologists recognise the role played by language in cognitive development. But what happens when children are socialised into multilingual modes of communication? Empirical research on the cognitive consequences of bilingual development can be divided in two periods. The early studies, mainly psychometric ones, conducted before the 1960, reported mainly negative results: bilingual children suffered from academic retardation, from a linguistic handicap, had a lower IQ and were socially maladjusted as compared with monolingual children. Bilinguality was viewed as the cause of an inferior intelligence.

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From the sixties onwards studies demonstrating positive effects by far outnumber research which still mentions negative effects. An important turning point came in 1962 with the publication of the Peal & Lambert study: comparing the academic achievement of bilingual and monolingual children, the authors came to the conclusion that bilingual children showed a higher level of cognitive development which they attributed to a more developed cognitive flexibility. Among others, the following advantages have been mentioned in the studies conducted after 1962: a greater ability in reconstructing perceptual situations, superior results on verbal and non-verbal intelligence; a greater sensitivity to semantic relations between words; higher scores on concept-formation tasks and rule-discovery tasks; a better performance with traditional psychometric school tests; a greater originality in creative thinking. Bilinguals are also better in verbal-transformation and symbol-substitution; in correction of ungrammatical sentences; in problem-solving tasks. They outperform monolinguals in metalinguistic tasks. (For a review, see Hamers & Blanc, 2000.) However, a small number of studies still report poor academic achievement of bilingual children. When this occurs, it almost always refers to minority children, schooled in the majority language and having their own mother tongue devalorised. Attempting to explain the positive and negative effects of bilingual development, Lambert (1974) suggests distinguishing between additive and subtractive bilinguality. In its additive form the child adds a second language as a communicative and cognitive tool to its linguistic repertoire; in its subtractive form the little valorised mother tongue is replaced by the more prestigious second language. In the first case the child might benefit from a bilingual situation whereas in the second case the child’s cognitive development is likely to be delayed. In their model of bilingual development, Hamers & Blanc (1982) suggest that social and individual valorisation of both languages play a crucial role for the bilingual’s child cognitive development. Education can provide the necessary context for additive bilinguality by insisting on mother tongue education for minority children. Several authors have suggested that a bilingual child would develop a deeper level of processing which would lead to a greater cognitive flexibility and a more developed metalinguistic awareness. In Vygotsky’s (1962) view, being able to express the same thought in different languages will enable ‘the child to see his language as one particular system among many, to view its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to awareness of his linguistic operations’. This early awareness further generalises to other areas of concept learning and thinking. During the last decades the development of bilinguality has been analysed in relation to the development of linguistic awareness. Bilingual children may have a greater cognitive control in information processing than do monolingual

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children; this provides them with the necessary foundation for metalinguistic ability, a necessary tool in cognitive development. Because experiencing with two languages enhances the awareness of the analysis and control components of language processing, different processing systems develop to serve two linguistic systems from the ones that operate with one language. These advantages are available to all children provided with an adequate bilingual education program. Josiane F. Hamers Laval University, Canada

7. Types of language ecologies 7.1 Balanced multilingualism Multilingualism is often portrayed as a consequence of speakers having to communicate with outgroups, but this is only part of the story. As Kendon (1988), who like Laycock (above) emphasises the rationality of multilingualism, has observed for Australia: People may speak several different languages, not so much because they need to do so to make themselves understood in different places, but because their languages serve as a means of expressing multiple social identities that they can lay claim to through their network of kin relationships. Choosing different languages can be equated with choosing different registers or styles in a monolingual speech community. Whether different communicative functions and domains are talked about in one or more than one language differs from group to group. The fact remains that successful communication requires a repertoire of many speech varieties or languages. Balanced multilingualism is predicated, on the one hand, on a stable ecological link between speakers of different languages and, on the other hand, or the absence of sudden changes in established patterns of social and spatial mobility. It is manifested, in instances such as Melanesia or tropical Australia, with egalitarian modes of coexistence but hierarchical structures, such as that of Kupwar (see above). Other examples of traditional multilingualism have been discussed for the Asia Pacific Region by Wurm, Mühlhäusler and Laycock (1996) and in Wurm (ed. 1979). I shall begin by looking at areas of extensive multilingualism such as Papua New Guinea (Laycock 1979), the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland (Sutton 1991) or Brazil (Aikenvald 1999, Sorensen 1967). Communication between the speakers of multiple small languages is achieved by a number of means all of which seek the dual purpose of enabling intercommunication whilst maintaining the maximum diversity of local vernacular. The maintenance of language numbers of small local vernaculars is required both to preserve ethnocultural identity and to ensure a fit between languages and local environmental conditions.

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A large number of small group of speakers (fewer than 1,000) also ensures that (a) relatively unauthoritarian structures can be maintained within a language community and (b) no community can readily achieve power over another community: diversity reduces the scope for competition and strengthens links between speakers of small vernaculars. Speakers of small or very small languages are rarely monolingual as they depend on their well-being and functional links with other groups for trade, out marriages and joint action. The solutions to this requirement vary from ecology to ecology: an obvious but relatively ‘costly’ solution is multilingualism or the less costly dual-lingualism (passive multilingualism) where each party speaks their own language but understands their interlocuter’s language. The greatest degree of multilingualism is encountered in parts of Australia (e.g. Cape York Peninsula, Sutton 1991) where speakers have at their disposal a repertoire of up to a dozen languages; a knowledge of 3–4 languages such as in parts of Papua New Guinea is more common, but because multilingualism usually does not imply full competence in all languages it is impossible to be precise. The varying extent of communicative requirements when dealing with outgroups is the reason for bilinguals employing a vernacular and one or more special intergroup Pidgins. A particularly sophisticated solution is a layered language ecology (Mühlhäusler 1999) where local vernaculars are employed mainly to express local identity and discuss local knowledge, intergroup Pidgins (often with a 50/50 mixed lexicon and a common core grammar) are employed mainly for transactions between villages, and regional lingua francas are employed mainly for signalling regional identity and exchanging regionally important information. Examples of such layered ecologies have been documented for Native (Indian) Americans in the southern United States by Drechsel (1997). Similar layering is developing in the European Union where many inhabitants are competent in international English, their National Standard Language, plus a local vernacular. Stable hierarchical communities often employ a diglossic pattern, where there are specialised functions for High (socially superordinate) and Low (socially subordinate) forms of speech. In the strictest sense, these varieties should be historically and lexically related such as French versus Haitian Creole or Classical Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Ferguson 1959). In a wider sense the complementary functional distribution of two languages, e.g. Spanish and Guarani in Paraguay, has also been labelled diglossia (for more details see Romaine 1989). In using labels such as stable or balanced, I do not wish to suggest that traditional societies are static. Rather, the rate of change in many traditional language ecologies is such that they can adapt to those changes that inevitably occur. What endangers them is that technological and social changes that are now occurring have put their adaptive potential under severe strain. 7.2 Mixed endemic–exotic ecologies Migrations, invasions and colonisation are the main factors that bring endemic languages into contact with exotic ones, with a range of linguistic outcomes such as the large scale extinction of Indo European languages in Central Asia, following the

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Mongol invasion, pidginization, creolization and intensive mixing between local ‘Papuan’ and ‘Austronesian’ languages in Melanesian or the specialisation of the two language types in a new linguistic ecology as in the case of Carib and South American languages in the form of gender differentiation (Trudgill 1983). What such processes may have done to linguistic ecologies in the past remains unknown. It is certain, however, that even without major contacts, the number of languages that became extinct in pre-colonial times was of a very large scale. Walsh (1997), working with figures used by O’Grady (1979), argues that over the last 15,000 years a minimum of 4,000 and perhaps as many as several hundred thousand languages have become extinct in Australia. European colonisation, and the technological and social changes that happened in this wake have created massive changes in the linguistic ecologies, in particular: (1) the establishment of a small number of powerful exotic languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French) in most parts of the world, (2) the emergence of a small number of large natural languages (e.g. Indonesian, Hindi, Swahili) modelled on European National languages, (3) widespread diglossia, transitional multilingualism and partial Ausbau of selected local languages. An important study of the new mixed endemic-exotic communities is that by MyersScotton (1993) for Africa. She documents the change from a relatively stable to a highly dynamic multilingualism in which introduced European languages play a pivotal role. In the past, multilingualism was found primarily among people who were mobile in a geographic sense (p. 30ff) or amongst speakers of a small language surrounded by a larger one. Today, mobility in a socio-economic sense is the prime reason. Adding a metropolitan language to one’s repertoire can lead to competition, functional reproduction of non-metropolitan languages and language shift. Whilst a number of studies of new types of diglossia or triglossia are available it is not easy to generalise, as the reasons for using languages in certain domains and functions are contingent on complex sociohistorical processes (Fishman 1965). A classic study of a traditional language ecology to which exotic languages have been added is that by Sankoff (1972) where she discusses code switching among the Buang of PNG in the 1970s many of whom spoke a church lingua franca, Yabem, and still more spoke Tok Pisin. Speakers’ choices are summarised in Diagram 3. More recently Sankoff has discussed some of the changing patterns of code switching among the Buang under the impact of English education and migration to urban centres. An important feature of the latter article is the demonstration that code switching behaviour can differ considerably among the individuals within a given group or society and that the mastery of a multitude of subcodes and codes may be ‘in part a result of deliberate development of rhetorical skills by aspirants to leadership.’ A situation (Mühlhäusler 1996) far more complex than among the rural Buang is found in Fiji (Schütz 1985) where a number of varieties of Fijian are spoken side-by-side with

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41 decision to speak

speaking to Buang

formal situation

religious

business: traditional government: e.g. yam community distribution affairs

speaking to non-Buang

informal situation

written

stranger

oral

non-stranger

missionary Yabem or Bukawa teacher speaker pastor

Buang speaker

other

YABEM

BUANG NM YABEM

NM

normal special circumstances circumstances e.g. joking

YABEM NM BUANG

BUANG NM

BUANG

YABEM NM

NM YABEM

BUANG

NM

YABEM

Diagram 3. Language choice among the Buang in Papua New Guinea two exotic languages, English and Fiji Hindi. The degrees of stability achieved in Paraguay (Rubin 1968) for Spanish and Guarani would seem to be relatively rare and competition or even dualling (Myers, Scotton 1993) are common in the 20th century. In 1971 White concluded: Fiji shares with many other new nations the problems of creating a sense of sociocultural unity in a territorial area which at the moment has little else but geo-political unity. It is characteristic of emerging nations that the forces of nationalism and nationism co-exist, and it is common for an ethnically based diglossia to potentially be divisive, but the possibilities of division are reduced by two factors disclosed in the current survey: (i) the practice of vernacular bilingualism, and (ii) the use of English as a mediating or stand-by language in intergroup interaction. English, it is clear, has the potentiality of becoming an instrument both of nationism and of nationalism, but it will probably have to serve as an artefact of geo-political unity before it can contribute to the evolution of socio-cultural unity in the emergent nation of Fiji. Thirty years later the situation remains problematic and attempts to create a stable society with a stable multilingual ecology continue. 7.3 Competitive language ecologies The reader needs to be reminded of the ecological principle that healthy linguistic ecologies are characterised by a large proportion of functional interrelationships

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(mutually beneficial) between languages and a relatively small proportion of competitive ones. The view that people’s linguistic choices are rational ones, regulated by a rational market forces ignores, as Tollefson (1991) has shown, the fact that the language market is far from free but rather is dominated by the monopolism of a few privileged (sometimes referred to as killer) languages. Competition can take a number of shapes. The most extreme one is the killing off of speakers of minority languages (as happened with many Australian and Amerindian people), resettlement, forced assimilation (which is an ongoing process in many countries), legislation or deliberate status planning and discrimination against smaller languages. In the majority of instances one is dealing with a gradual loss of ecological factors that are needed to maintain structural linguistic diversity. Ironically, languages can be rendered uncompetitive by the very acts that were meant to strengthen them. Standardisation, promotion of literacy and school programmes, as has been argued in Mühlhäusler (1996), can in some instances accelerate the decline of languages and eventual language shift. The two principal reasons, in other words, for language competition are the introduction of powerful regional or national official languages into areas where many small languages are spoken and the migration of speakers of small languages. How these two factors can lead to the extinction of many minority languages in India has been illustrated by Pandharipande (1992). The external conditions which have made smaller local languages unacceptable according to this writer are: (a) mechanisation of professions such as fishing, farming, tanning of leather etc. is rapidly replacing human labour by machines, thus leaving the traditional skills of these communities useless to a great extent, (b) deforestation and urbanisation of the villages have made it mandatory for the tribals to interact with the dominant/majority group for commercial trade or jobs, and (c) the education policy of state governments to promote education among these communities through the medium of regional/state languages has accelerated the speed of learning of the dominant regional language among these communities. These communities view the regional language as a tool for upward socioeconomic mobility in the society. In as much as these changes were brought to the communities from the outside, the choice of shifting to other languages is far from free. It is necessary not just for social mobility, but in many instances, physical survival. Migration again can be both a choice driven by the wish to improve one’s life or it can also be beyond people’s control brought about by war, persecution and forced resettlement. Migrant languages not only are far from the cultural and physical support system that once sustained them and surrounded by numerically and functionally more powerful languages; as Fishman (1991) has shown, there are few instances in which migrant languages have survived for more than three generations but this survival was typically accompanied by a shrinkage in the domains and functions in

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which these languages are used. First language adaptation is a matter of centuries, the outcome of competition is often a matter of years only. Whatever short-term economic benefits it may bring, the long term consequences are far from beneficial. One of the problems of language shift is that it can lead to a loss of cultural identity. There is a strong but not necessary link between language and people’s identity, the wish to speak the same language typically being driven by the wish to belong to a community of like people (Fishman 1991). The loss of a language can be a matter of grief for a community and can have negative side-effects on its members. When there is a strong link between language and identity, a number of adjustments can occur. In the case of the indigenous languages of Australia, 90% of Australian Aborigines no longer speak a traditional language. However, traditional patterns of language use have been maintained in various Aboriginal Englishes (Eades 1982), for example South Australian Nunga English, South East Queensland English, and the concept of language ownership can persist even where a language is no longer spoken. New Englishes in Australia are not necessarily languages of identity, rather a typical pattern in traditional language whether spoken or not is the focus of identity. Aboriginal English is the language of non-identity with the white majority and standard English a language of communication within the wider community. 7.4 Artificial language ecologies One can argue that diversity is natural and streamlining is artificial and further that most contemporary language ecologies are located at the artificial end of a continuum, with examples of instances where exotic world languages were elevated to national languages being particularly artificial. Thus, just as national languages can be labelled ‘cultural’, language ecologies can also be artificial to a substantial degree. Singapore provides an example of how repeated acts of planning and policy making can create a different ecology. In Singapore, the suppression of small ethnic languages as well as that of nonMandarin varieties of Chinese has been much more deliberate. Goh (1980) reported on the language situation in Singapore as follows: Singapore society is ethnically heterogeneous, with about 76% Chinese, 15% Malay, 7% Indians, and 2% from other ethnic origins. Its language situation is still more diversified since each of the three major ethnic groups speaks many language varieties. A census report identifies more than 33 specific mothertongue groups, 20 of which have more than 0.1% of the population as native speakers. Four major languages are designated as official languages: Malay, English, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil. Hokkien, while a major language, is not an official language. In addition, there are three minor languages: Teochew, Cantonese and Hainanese. (Goh 1980, quoted in Kuo 1980) This policy of egalitarian multilingualism has since given way to a policy of English/Mandarin bilingualism and deliberate official attempts to get rid of Chinese varieties other than Mandarin.

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The European Union, whereas far more tolerant of minority languages, nevertheless has over the years introduced many policies that have remarkably changed its original linguistic ecology and, with a number of new members about to join, more radical solutions (e.g. creating a supernational artificial language, such as Eurolingua or using Esperanto) are being considered. Thus far, artificial language ecologies have been of the streamlining type, i.e. the objective has been to reduce the number of languages spoken. There is no reason why one could not also plan for highly diverse language ecologies in which a maximum number of languages could be sustained. Given the extent of which traditional language ecologies have been disrupted, this would seem a logical task for future language planners. However, management of complex diversity presupposes a great deal more knowledge than is available to most language planners at present. The idea was briefly mooted in the context of planning a multi-ethnic, multi-function polis in South Australia but with the demise of the physical project the plans for cultural and linguistic diversity have also been shelved. An interesting project is that of Romansch Grishun (see contributors to Lüdi 1994) which combines streamlining with planning for diversity. In essence, five very small Romansch languages were merged with into a single standard variety (Romansch Grishun) which is recognised as Switzerland’s fourth official language and which is used side-by-side with the other three official languages in parts of the country. The concept of merging closely related small languages into a single larger more competitive language is also being tried for Sami and other languages (Wurm 1994). What the long-term chances of this approach might be remains to be seen. My remarks on types of language ecologies and speech communities should not be regarded as either complete or as a statement of linguistic fact. It is a pre-theoretical, exploratory attempt to classify a very large number of phenomena, each of them unique, and may require a major revision after more becomes known about the numerous ways in which human beings establish their linguistic identities, define themselves vis à vis others and cooperate or compete with one another.

8. Conclusions Whilst linguists, and to a certain extent sociolinguists, have tended to arrive at generalisations I have in this paper taken the opposite approach. My point is that it is not possible to make sweeping generalisations as to what languages, speech communities and language ecologies are. Rather, humanity has over a very long time arrived at a large number of different solutions to the management of human affairs and to adapting to environmental conditions. A grammar in its widest sense accounts for the fact that the whole is more that the sum of the parts. Sentences, for instance, mean more than what their individual words cumulatively mean. Speech communities or ecologies too are grammatical phenomena in the sense that the whole community is more than the sum of its parts. What matters are the syntagmatic relations or functional links between the parts. At

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this point only relatively few studies and a small metalinguistic vocabulary exists (e.g. diglossia, balanced multilingualism) to describe the grammar of entities comprised of different languages. To understand why so many individual languages are disappearing requires an understanding of the ecological conditions that sustain complex language ecologies. Language is inescapably linked to the world and affects the well-being of those who inhabit it. Language users want more than to communicate information, they want to maintain social bonds, have a feeling of belonging and identity, to include and exclude outsiders to varying degrees and to manage their environment. In view of the numerous problems of overpopulation, genocide, war, displacement and psychological disturbances in the 21st century, it would seem essential to gain a greater understanding of healthy as well as pathological aspects of different linguistic groups and their interactions. An initial step is to adopt an interlinguistic and ecological perspective in documenting the world’s language communities.

Chapter 2

The Linguistic Heritage A un populu mittitilu a catina spugghiatillu attupatici a vucca, é ancora libiru.

Enchain a people strip it bare, cover its mouth, it is still free.

Livatici u travagghiu u passaportu a tavula unni mancia u lettu unni dormi é ancora riccu.

Deprive it of its work of its passport of the table where it eats of the bed where it sleeps and it is still rich.

Un populu, diventa poviru e servu, quannu ci arrobbanu a lingua addudata di patri: é persu pi sempri.

A people is poor and enslaved when it is robbed of the language inherited from its parents: it is lost for ever.

IGNAZIO BUTTITTA, Lingua e Dialettu, (Sicilian poet)

How many languages are spoken in the world? This is a question we have all asked at one time or another. It is also a question that linguists are often asked and which we have had to answer on numerous occasions. But the answer linguists give to this type of question is usually unsatisfactory, as we can only venture an approximate figure. The fact is that for various reasons it is not easy to give a straightforward answer to this elementary question. One of the reasons it is difficult to answer is that some parts of our planet have not yet been described linguistically and that even today, from time to time, news reaches us of the discovery of new ethnic groups and languages. This happens, for example, in the islands of Indonesia, in regions of Papua New Guinea and in tropical

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regions of South America. In 1998, for example, the Vahuadate and Aukedate ethnic groups in Indonesia were “discovered” from the point of view of Western culture. Another reason why it is difficult to answer is related to the names of languages. Languages, in general, tend to be given more than one name, depending on the neighbouring peoples the speakers have dealings with and the name the speakers themselves give their own language. This multiplicity of denominations complicates the job of identifying the language concealed behind different names. The problem is such that the Ethnologue (Grimes 2000), for example, speaks of 6,809 languages and 41,806 names for them and their variants. But the real problem making it difficult to answer is over who should decide when a variety is a language or a dialect, or, in other words, what concept of language we are working with. As has been pointed out already by Mühlhäusler, until recently the concept of European national languages has been decisive in this issue. Until very recently, Luxemburgian was considered a dialect or variety of German. Today, though, Luxemburgian, along with German and French, is one of the official languages in Luxemburg. Who should decide if a variety is an independent language or a dialect of another language? This is a crucial issue, since the concept of language varies according to the period, the place, the culture and the society. After all, who can stop a community with political and economic power that is firmly determined to defend the rank of language for its speech? Such a variety of criteria is used that Grimes (2000), for example, mentions seven different Germanic languages spoken in Germany, while for many these are no more than varieties of German. The same sort of thing happens with other very widespread languages in the world, such as Arabic, English or Chinese. But this question also affects numerous less widespread languages. Who, for example, should decide whether Achi is a variety of the Maya language K’iche’, as the Academy of Maya Languages in Guatemala proclaims, or an independent Maya language, as many of its speakers claim? Who should decide whether the different varieties of Tamazight, Sami or Quechua form a single language or a group of languages? Mutual understanding as one of the characteristics for defining the autonomy of languages is not a valid criterion or at least does not work infallibly. Otherwise, why are Danish, Swedish and Norwegian considered three separate languages if they have no problem understanding each other? Who decides whether or not the Croatian speaker understands the Serbian speaker, the Catalan speaker understands the Spanish speaker or the Urdu speaker understands the Hindi speaker? Furthermore, mutual understanding is not always symmetrical and depends to a large extent on people’s attitudes. But, returning to the original question regarding the number of languages in existence, most linguists today (Crystal 2000, Nettle 1999, Comrie, Matthews & Polinsky 1996, Wurm 2001, Grenoble & Whaley 1998, Hagège 2000) give global figures between 5,000 and 6,000 languages, which we shall also use. If we start with the premise that some 6,000 languages are spoken in the world, their distribution by continent is approximately as follows: 1,900 in Africa (32%), 900 in America (15%), 1,900 in Asia (32%), 200 in Europe (3%) and 1,100 in the Pacific (18%) (see Diagram 4).

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32%

Africa 1900 Asia 1900 Pacific 1100

18%

America 900 Europe 200 32%

Diagram 4. Distribution of languages by continent Based on Krauss 1992 and Grimes 2000

But languages are not uniformly distributed over the different continents either. If we look at linguistic diversity by territories or states, we see that in 22 states there are more than 100 languages spoken, or, in other words, that in those 22 states almost 90% of the languages of the world are spoken (Table 2). Table 2. Number of languages per state State

Gunnemark (1991)

Krauss (1992)

Grimes (2000)

Papua New Guinea

750

850

823

Indonesia

300

670

726

India

350

380

387

Nigeria

400

410

505

Cameroon

200

270

279

–

240

288

Australia

150

250

235

Brazil

150

210

192

Zaire / Congo

200

220–200

218

–

160–100

201

United States

150

160–100

176

Philippines

100

160–100

169

Mexico

China

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Table 2. Continued State

Gunnemark (1991)

Krauss (1992)

Grimes (2000)

Burma

100

160–100

107

Nepal

–

160–100

120

Russia

100

160–100

100

Malaysia

120

160–100

139

Sudan

100

160–100

134

Tanzania

100

160–100

135

Ethiopia

–

160–100

82

Chad

–

160–100

132

100

160–100

109

–

160–100

68

Vanuatu Central African Republic

Based on Krauss 1992, Grimes 2000, Gunnemark 1991

If we classify languages according to the number of speakers they have, we see that a few languages, about 80, have more than ten million speakers each – that is, that 1.3% of languages account for about three quarters of the world population. On the other hand, 81.8% of languages do not exceed 100,000 speakers and 55.5% do not exceed 10,000, though on this question the sources differ considerably (Table 3).

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Table 3. Languages and number of speakers Number of speakers

Number of Percentage of Ascendant Descending languages total number accumulated accumulated of languages percentage percentage

More than 100 million

8

0.1

0.1

100

10 – 99.9 million

72

1.2

1.3

99.9

1 – 9.9 million

239

3.9

5.2

98.7

100,000 – 999,999

795

13.0

18.2

94.8

10,000 – 99,999

1,605

26.3

44.5

81.8

1,000 – 9,999

1,782

29.2

73.7

55.5

100 – 999

1,075

17.6

91.3

26.3

10 – 99

302

4.9

96.2

8.7

1–9

181

3.0

99.2

3.8

1

51

0.8

100

0.8

Based on Crystal 2000

THE LANGUAGES OF NIGERIA Nigeria, with a population of about 100 million, has a little over 400 languages, most of which belong to two large families: Niger-Congo (whose largest subfamily is Benue-Congo), and Afro-Asiatic (whose largest sub-family is Chadic). These two sub-families between them account for most of the country’s languages. In fact, Hausa, one of the country’s three major languages, is Chadic, while the other two, Yoruba and Igbo, are Benue-Congo. Another interesting thing about these sub-families is that Chadic is found mainly in the northern, and northeastern areas, while Benue-Congo spreads across the southern and central parts of the country. The third family, Nilo-Saharan, is represented mainly by Kanuri in the northeastern tip of the country. In addition to languages

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that are indigenous to the country, English is the official language, Nigerian (English-based) Pidgin is an informal medium, and Arabic is used mainly in connection with Islam. It should be clear from the foregoing that Nigeria is typically multilingual with all the challenges that characterise multilingualism. The fact that there are 400 languages to 100 million people does not imply that each language is spoken by ¼ million persons. The three major languages account for about 55 million native speakers, while another 10 million speak one or more of them as an additional language. If a language is not regarded as major, it does not mean it is minor. In practically every State, there is a main language which can be promoted and there are hundreds of smaller languages at the local level. Ideally, all Nigerian languages should find a role at the national, State or local level. The ideal is however often different from reality. In spite of policies purporting to enhance the status and role of Nigerian languages, implementation is generally ineffective. The result is that Nigerian languages are constantly being bombarded by the dominance of English as the language of government and administration, education at almost all levels, most of the media, science and technology and most creative writing. In recent years, international attention has been focused on endangered languages and the need to safeguard them. This effort must not be limited to smaller languages alone but should rightly extend to the dominance of English and the deprivation arising from lack of use of Nigerian languages in prestigious domains. A major constraint in this regard is the lack of political will by policy-makers and unfavorable attitudes to indigenous languages engendered by the colonial experience. If Nigerian languages and cultures are to survive, basic education must be given in a child’s language and efforts must be made to take measures to enhance the value and status of indigenous languages. As long as being proficient in Nigerian languages is not seen as conferring any special rewards or advantages, so long will their use and preservation be hampered. Ayo Bamgbose Ibadan University, Nigeria

Although the number of speakers is often considered decisive for the preservation and future of languages, we would like at this point to stress the relative nature of this question. At first sight it seems to be the case, as Nettle (1999), for example, points out, that below a certain number of speakers a language can have problems surviving. This author indicates the figure of 10,000 speakers as a crucial threshold. But this issue has a lot to do with the type of society and culture.

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Languages with less than 10,000 or even 1,000 speakers can form highly viable communities in which the only language used for all internal purposes is their own. We find situations of this type, for example, in the communities using the Gumawana language in Papua New Guinea, which has 367 speakers according to the 1996 census, Nambikwara in Brazil, with almost 1,000 speakers of which 95% are monolingual, Ka’apor in Brazil, with less than 500 speakers of which 90% are monolingual, Onobasulu in Papua New Guinea, with some 500 speakers, or Secoya in Ecuador, with a similar number of speakers. Similar situations have been described on numerous occasions and in a variety of places, such as the Caucasian language Hinukh in Dagestan (Kibrik 1991) or the Baiso language of Ethiopia (Hagège 2000). The community’s cohesion and its wish to maintain its language and culture can decide their future and so it has been for centuries, as in the case of Baiso in Ethiopia, mentioned above, which for more than a millennium has resisted competition from more widespread languages around it. In other words, as well as the number of speakers, the vitality shown by the language is fundamental. On the other hand, there are languages with more than 10,000 speakers in situations of extreme danger. This is the case, for example, of Breton in France. According to figures by Broudic (1999), although Breton has more than 250,000 speakers, due to the percentage of speakers in the total population (Diagram 5) and their distribution by generation (Diagram 6), the situation seems highly delicate. Global figures for Breton for 1997 (Diagram 6) seem to indicate a rapid reduction in the number of speakers in the coming years, although at the end of the nineteenth century it had almost one and a half million speakers. The number of speakers of a language therefore seems to be a relative aspect. However, a decrease in the number of speakers is an important indicator, as all the experts agree. It is a known fact, for example, that in many parts of the planet aboriginal languages are seeing an alarming decrease in numbers of speakers in a trend that leads to extinction. By way of example, let us look at the extremely disturbing figures for the percentage of speakers of aboriginal languages in Canada and Australia (Diagrams 7 and 8) based on recent censuses. 9% 57%

11%

Good knowledge Fairly good knowledge A few words Nothing

23%

Diagram 5. Knowledge of Breton in 1997 Based on Broudic 1999

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 74+ years

60–74 years

40–59 years

20–39 years

15–19 years

Diagram 6. Percentage of speakers of Breton by age group in 1997 Based on Broudic 1999

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

1996

Diagram 7. Evolution of the percentage of the indigenous population speaking an aboriginal language in Canada Based on Norris 1998

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30

20.4

20 14

20 10 0 1986

1991

1996

Diagram 8. Evolution of the percentage of the indigenous population speaking an aboriginal language in Australia Based on McConvell and Thieberger 2001

There now follows the contribution by Professor Moreno Cabrera (Autonomous University of Madrid) on linguistic diversity (pp. 54–90). The subjects presented are, first of all, linguistic diversity on the individual, genetic and structural or typological planes, secondly, the location of linguistic diversity in the different parts of the world with particular reference to endangered languages, thirdly, the loss of linguistic heritage and the need to understand the equality and dignity of all human languages and cultures, and finally, the alarming consequences of the internationalisation of English, which the author calls Anglo-Saxon linguistic imperialism.

Linguistic diversity in the twenty-first century Defending our languages and their diversity, particularly against the domination of a single language is more than defending our cultures. It is defending our life. (Hagège 2000) We shall now take a look at the planet’s linguistic diversity and we shall see that this linguistic diversity is in very serious danger. The rate at which the languages and cultures of the less favoured communities are disappearing is increasing steadily and the numerous warnings that have been issued do not seem to have been able to halt the phenomenon in any significant way. It is impossible to discuss the planet’s present linguistic diversity without referring to this circumstance. For this reason, in the last section of this contribution the causes for this dramatic situation are analysed briefly

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and it is argued that the acceleration in the loss of the world’s linguistic wealth has a lot to do with the steady internationalisation of English, which is not based on a spontaneous or natural phenomenon but on certain monolingual models of acculturation that are becoming more and more widespread over the length and breadth of the planet.

Linguistic diversity In this section we shall establish the theoretical bases of linguistic diversity so as to make empirical considerations on this aspect in subsequent sections. We can distinguish three types of linguistic diversity (Nettle 1999): individual, genetic and typological. • Individual diversity refers to the number of languages spoken in the world; it is therefore determined by counting the number of languages spoken in each area of the planet. • Genetic diversity is determined by the number of linguistic families that exist in today’s world. Here, therefore, we count the number of genetically related language groups, called families, that there are in the world. • Structural diversity refers to the degree of variability in the grammatical structures of the world’s languages. We shall examine these three types of diversity in the following sections. We shall examine these three approaches to the concept of linguistic diversity in turn, since all three have important aspects for evaluating and understanding it.

Individual diversity As has been pointed out above, it is quite difficult to count the number of languages spoken in the world, as the criteria applied in different parts of the world are not the same. In countries where one or more standard languages have been officially adopted by the state, that language is usually counted as a single individual, even though there are varieties that differ to a greater or lesser degree. For example, English, German, Chinese and Russian are all counted as four single languages in most accounts, when it is well known that these languages include a large number of different linguistic varieties that are far from identical to one another. Nevertheless, this situation only occurs in certain parts of the world. There are places in the world that have no official standard languages, but a set of more or less similar linguistic varieties which are very often counted as separate languages, even though they resemble one another more than some of the varieties included in the languages mentioned above. Calculations of individual linguistic diversity on a world level are therefore biased, as they reduce linguistic diversity in the industrialised societies and increase linguistic diversity in the other societies. This creates the false impression that the so-called backward societies of the third world show a great linguistic diversity and that that diversity is one of the factors contributing to their so-called

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backwardness, stagnation or isolation. As we shall see in chapter four, these are racist ideas, despite attempts to back them up with seemingly objective facts and figures. The fact is that in Western industrialised societies linguistic variety is similar to that in third world countries, but this variety is disguised and hidden by the existence of standard languages. It is well known that in that part of Europe going from Vienna to Amsterdam there is a chain of Germanic varieties which are locally mutually intelligible and which are disguised behind generic terms like German or Dutch. There is no doubt that the countries making up this part of Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium) are amongst the most advanced, civilised and developed in the world. The same sort of thing goes for France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. No correlation can therefore be established between a high level of linguistic diversity and social, political or economic underdevelopment, isolation or stagnation. In addition, in many Western societies, as a result of immigration, there is a very appreciable number of speakers of non-European languages which should be counted as European languages of non-European origin. Something similar can be said of the United States and Canada. According to Grimes (1996), for example, in Great Britain there are thought to be at least 140,000 speakers of Gujarati, an Indo-Arian language from India; in France, there are more than 600,000 speakers of Algerian Arabic, more than 500,000 speakers of Kabyle, a language of the Algerian Berber family, and more than 200,000 speakers of Tunisian Arabic. In the thirteenth edition of the catalogue of languages Ethnologue (Grimes 1996), a total of 6,703 languages are listed. However, this figure is biased by the considerations we have just made. Even so, the increase as a result of splitting up languages like German or Italian could be compensated by the reduction in the number as a result of merging many varieties of indigenous languages which are given as separate languages. For example, the Ethnologue lists more than thirty-five Quechua languages, which could be reduced to just one or two if we used criteria like those applied, for example, in Europe, even though there is no official unified Quechua adopted as a standard language. The problem is much more difficult in the case of areas like Papua New Guinea, where most of the indigenous languages (871, according to this catalogue) are known only poorly or not at all, so that in many cases their degree of similarity cannot be assessed. Even so, a figure of around 6,000 could be taken as the approximate number of languages spoken in the world today. Where languages do show considerable variation is in the number of speakers. The imbalances on a world level are very big and to some extent reflect other imbalances in the world economic and political structure. The following table (Table 4) is sufficiently illustrative.

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Table 4. Percentages of languages with less speakers than the figure indicated Continent