Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T12:49:52.124Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making do with less: Some surprises along the language death proficiency continuum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Nancy C. Dorian
Nancy C. Dorian*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
*
Nancy C. Dorian, Departments of German and Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Relative proficiency in Gaelic varies by age in a Highland Scottish region where Gaelic is spoken by a decreasing number of bilinguals in a steadily aging population segment. Although there is a Gaelic proficiency continuum ranging from full fluency (and Gaelic dominance) to minimal generative skills (and English dominance), there are also deviations at both extremes of skill: Fully fluent speakers show self-conscious difficulty with one morphological and four syntactic structures, while minimally proficient speakers show less difficulty than might be expected in the use of conjunctions. An exceptionally keen though low-proficiency speaker can devise unusual means of compensation in using the language. Neither full fluency nor marked deficiency produces altogether predictable levels of structural conservatism or communicative success.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 257 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Dorian, N. C. (1973). Grammatical change in a dying dialect. Language, 49, 413–438.Google Scholar
Dorian, N. C. (1980). Language shift in community and individual: The phenomenon of the laggard semi-speaker. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 25, 85–94.Google Scholar
Dorian, N. C. (1981). Language death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Dorian, N. C. (1982). Defining the speech community in terms of its working margins. In Romaine, S. (Ed.), Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1979). Locating the frontier between social and psychological factors in linguistic variation. In Fillmore, C. J., Kempler, D., & Wang, W. S.-Y. (Eds.), Individual differences in language ability and language behavior. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Schmidt, A. (1985). Young people’s Dyirbal: An example of language death from Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar