Introduction

In this chapter we are concerned with structural changes in obsolescing languages attributable to the language death process. On the basis of our experience with a number of dying languages we propose hypotheses about the characteristic structural developments within the languages concerned. These hypotheses can be confirmed, or contradicted and refined, as additional understanding of dying languages accumulates from the rapidly growing sources.

The languages of our experience upon which we base our observations are set forth below, presented with information on their geographic location, genetic affiliation, and number of speakers. Speakers' linguistic ability or structural knowledge of the obsolescing languages of this list varies greatly, and many communities exhibit a proficiency continuum ranging from fully competent speakers to individuals with very little knowledge at all. For purposes of exposition only, to give an idea of the kinds of speakers in each of the situations with which we worked, we characterize speakers roughly as S for “strong” or “(nearly) fully competent” I for “imperfect”, i.e. for reasonably fluent so-called “semi-speakers” W “weak semi-speakers” with more restricted speaking competence (perhaps akin to Elmendorf's [1981] “last speakers”); and R for so-called “rememberers” who know only few words or isolated phrases (“word-inserters” may belong to this group: see Voegelin and Voegelin 1977b). Language communities with the full proficiency continuum from S to W and/or R are presented as PC.