They just fade away: Language death and the loss of phonological variation

Abstract

Using data from four sets of alternating forms in a moribund Dutch-lexicon creole, this article addresses the characteristics of variation in moribund languages, and “the usefulness of variationist approaches in the description and analysis” of them (Drechsel 1990:552–53). The analysis shows how variable phonological rules continue to exist in a dying language, even after large numbers of words have been bled from the rules' inputs, thereby providing support for Dressler's hypothesis of lexical fading (1972). A three-stage scenario of rule loss is proposed to account for the fact that, in the Negerhollands case, there is substantially greater phonological variation at the level of the community than at the level of the individual. (Obsolescence, phonological variation, phonological change, creole languages, Virgin Islands, Negerhollands)

What's Past Is Past: Variation in the Expression of Past Time Reference in Negerhollands Narratives

“…In the case of 20th-century Negerhollands it is not a priori clear who are the most fluent speakers and who represent the semispeakers. The last speaker of Negerhollands, Mrs. Alice Stevens, has been shown to be a fluent speaker of Negerhollands (Sabino 1990: 65–66, 1994:500–501). Although there is hardly any background information available on dJdJ's informants, they are described as faithful to Negerhollands despite the fact that English and/or English/Creole was or had become their dominant language (de Josselin de Jong 1924:16).…”

“…This is also true for dJdJ's informants. For example, LEXICAL FADING —the loss of lexical items that may result in the disappearance of phonological contrasts—strongly decreased the occurrence of certain phonological minimal pairs to such an extent that some minimal pairs were no longer attested within the speech of one individual, but only at the level of the community (Sabino 1994:520). Furthermore, BORROWING of lexical items and CALQUING of phrases and grammatical and lexical constructions was frequent, although not overwhelming.…”

Contact languages as “endangered” languages

“…Thus these languages are, as Trouillot (1992) has said of Caribbean societies, "inescapably historical." Their historicalness is an important part of what makes contact languages intriguing to linguistic scholars of various stripes: to a degree not possible with older lanceptions include Sabino's (1994Sabino's ( , 1996 work on Negerhollands, Kouwenberg's (2000) work on Berbice Dutch, and Hazaël-Massieux's (1999) book-length treatment of French-lexified creoles as endangered languages; see also Garrett (2000Garrett ( , 2005 for discussion of language shift and the status of Kwéyòl in St. Lucia. guages, it is possible to identify (to varying degrees of precision and certainty, to be sure) the specific time, place, and circumstances of their origins, and to trace their developmental trajectories up to the present day.…”

Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities

“…For example, we have reports of the collapse of systematic vocabulary levels (taboo lexical registers, registers of religious esoterica, and the like); of the decline in categorial richness or delicacy of structural distinctions (gender systems, tense/mode/aspect/voice, superordinate vs subordinate clausestructure systems, and more); these are exemplified in Dorian 1989;cf also Schmidt 1985;Moore 1988;Cook 1989;Craig 1992;Sabino 1994. And we have reports of the transformation of local language forms and/or functions specifically on the basis of apparently nonlocal linguistic models, "superstrates."…”