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philenaHehehe. First, I would like to mention how eXtreme my BA (12-ish pages (double spaced) and probably not more than half done!) is getting. I find myself typing things like phonemez, and WTF, man?*, and I find myself becoming more and more enamored of the idea that these items should stay in my paper.** How likely is it that the Darden will actually catch them, after all? He told me himself (yes! I have been in contact with the man! He exists!) that I should plan on presenting my results in the form of a chart!
But yes, Chicago Linguistics Society was über-fun. I hung out with Jeremy, a fellow linguistixer, for much of the day, and saw some talks, which were some fun and some interesting and some intimidating, but almost all comprehensible. Occasionally I had something interesting to say during the question-and-answer periods that followed the talks, but for the most part I kept my silence. Sometimes people would ask (much more learnedly and allusively) the same thing I was going to ask, and sometimes when I asked my question somebody else asked another question sort of as a follow-up to mine. I do regret not asking something that I think was very worth-while though; the talk was given by Salikoko Mufwene, and since he was an invited guest speaker (a) he was a Very Big Name and a Highly Regarded Expert, and (b) everyone, including my professors, was at the talk. I got stage fright, I guess. But I later discussed my concern with Jeremy, and he agreed that it was a valid question, which made me feel better.
The talk was arguing that language death is not actually something that people should be concerned about for a number of reasons. Many cases of language death are not because of an overly aggressive European or American colonizing culture, but in fact have been part of a common historical development. The Indo-Europeans pushed out a great number of other indigenous languages in Europe, of which Basque is the only survivor, before itself splitting into all the Celtic and Italic and Slavic and Baltic and Germanic families we're so used to today. And the spread of Rome pushed out the Celtic languages, which are mainly dead or dying now, and replaced them with Latin, which split into French and Portuguese and Spanish and so on. A similar thing happened in Africa, with the spread of the Bantu languages suppressing the Khoisan languages which are now all in bad shape, but nobody is calling Bantu languages the effects of an overly aggressive imperialist society. So these examples show that the spread of one language to the detriment of another is not only a common, historically repeated occurrence, but is also offset by the split of the invading language into different dialects, which themselves become new languages. He also spoke about different interactions between colonizing languages and indigenous languages depending on the nature of the colonizers (trade, settlement, oppressive, etc.) which shows different effects: dominance of imperialist language, as with English in North America; dominance of the indigenous language, as happened when Chinese colonizers adopted Southeast Asian languages, and also with the Normans in England; and the rise of Creoles, as happened in Surinam, for example. Sometimes the same colonizing relationship will have different effects: The Germanic invaders destroyed the Celtic languages in Britain, but had no effect on the Romance vernacular in Gaul. The point of these examples was to show that we can't blame the colonizers for a language death until we understand more about the nature of the colonizers in relation to the indigenous languages. He also gave a fun example of how Afrikaans in South Africa has had no effect on the indigenous languages, to the point where now people argue that Afrikaans is in danger from the spread of English, while the indigenous languages are alive and well and not at all a part of that interplay.
So it was a good, interesting talk, and my question was aimed at only a small part of it, but I think it was valid. One of the points Salikoko Mufwene made was that the principles governing language spread and death have not changed: not only do some languages die, but their loss is offset to some extent by the gain resulting from the differentiation into many languages of the one conquering language. However, the principles now have changed: when one language becomes spread over a large area that it governs, it is no longer isolated from the rest of the area, because of modern communication: newspapers, televisions, radios, and so on. The televisions and radios are particularly important, because they support the spoken unity of the language, as well as the written one. Without vocal support, a differentiation is still entirely possible, even given written standardization. That's what happened with Mandarin and Cantonese, for example. The implication of this modern connectivity means that the differentiation of a mother invading language into many new daughter languages is not as easy, or arguably impossible. (Jeremy and I debated the degree of possibility for a while.) This means that, however unpredictable the results of an invading/colonizing language might be on the indigenous languages, there will still be a general amount of attrition resulting from whatever deaths of indigenous languages might occur. I didn't ask his opinion on this observation, but I do believe I should have. Well, phooey.
Okay. BA or sleep? I've gotten zero work done today, but the thought of sleeping is very tempting. I'll see if I can finish my page for today.
*Hey! For linguistics that's pretty eXtreme, yo! Not everyone can go bonkers over basmati à la Mike Nelson.
**Unlike a French paper I wrote last year, on the topic of the ideal king. For a rough draft my title was Le roi idéal. et tout ça, and that also ended up being the title for the final copy. I think I got an A- on that paper.
But yes, Chicago Linguistics Society was über-fun. I hung out with Jeremy, a fellow linguistixer, for much of the day, and saw some talks, which were some fun and some interesting and some intimidating, but almost all comprehensible. Occasionally I had something interesting to say during the question-and-answer periods that followed the talks, but for the most part I kept my silence. Sometimes people would ask (much more learnedly and allusively) the same thing I was going to ask, and sometimes when I asked my question somebody else asked another question sort of as a follow-up to mine. I do regret not asking something that I think was very worth-while though; the talk was given by Salikoko Mufwene, and since he was an invited guest speaker (a) he was a Very Big Name and a Highly Regarded Expert, and (b) everyone, including my professors, was at the talk. I got stage fright, I guess. But I later discussed my concern with Jeremy, and he agreed that it was a valid question, which made me feel better.
The talk was arguing that language death is not actually something that people should be concerned about for a number of reasons. Many cases of language death are not because of an overly aggressive European or American colonizing culture, but in fact have been part of a common historical development. The Indo-Europeans pushed out a great number of other indigenous languages in Europe, of which Basque is the only survivor, before itself splitting into all the Celtic and Italic and Slavic and Baltic and Germanic families we're so used to today. And the spread of Rome pushed out the Celtic languages, which are mainly dead or dying now, and replaced them with Latin, which split into French and Portuguese and Spanish and so on. A similar thing happened in Africa, with the spread of the Bantu languages suppressing the Khoisan languages which are now all in bad shape, but nobody is calling Bantu languages the effects of an overly aggressive imperialist society. So these examples show that the spread of one language to the detriment of another is not only a common, historically repeated occurrence, but is also offset by the split of the invading language into different dialects, which themselves become new languages. He also spoke about different interactions between colonizing languages and indigenous languages depending on the nature of the colonizers (trade, settlement, oppressive, etc.) which shows different effects: dominance of imperialist language, as with English in North America; dominance of the indigenous language, as happened when Chinese colonizers adopted Southeast Asian languages, and also with the Normans in England; and the rise of Creoles, as happened in Surinam, for example. Sometimes the same colonizing relationship will have different effects: The Germanic invaders destroyed the Celtic languages in Britain, but had no effect on the Romance vernacular in Gaul. The point of these examples was to show that we can't blame the colonizers for a language death until we understand more about the nature of the colonizers in relation to the indigenous languages. He also gave a fun example of how Afrikaans in South Africa has had no effect on the indigenous languages, to the point where now people argue that Afrikaans is in danger from the spread of English, while the indigenous languages are alive and well and not at all a part of that interplay.
So it was a good, interesting talk, and my question was aimed at only a small part of it, but I think it was valid. One of the points Salikoko Mufwene made was that the principles governing language spread and death have not changed: not only do some languages die, but their loss is offset to some extent by the gain resulting from the differentiation into many languages of the one conquering language. However, the principles now have changed: when one language becomes spread over a large area that it governs, it is no longer isolated from the rest of the area, because of modern communication: newspapers, televisions, radios, and so on. The televisions and radios are particularly important, because they support the spoken unity of the language, as well as the written one. Without vocal support, a differentiation is still entirely possible, even given written standardization. That's what happened with Mandarin and Cantonese, for example. The implication of this modern connectivity means that the differentiation of a mother invading language into many new daughter languages is not as easy, or arguably impossible. (Jeremy and I debated the degree of possibility for a while.) This means that, however unpredictable the results of an invading/colonizing language might be on the indigenous languages, there will still be a general amount of attrition resulting from whatever deaths of indigenous languages might occur. I didn't ask his opinion on this observation, but I do believe I should have. Well, phooey.
Okay. BA or sleep? I've gotten zero work done today, but the thought of sleeping is very tempting. I'll see if I can finish my page for today.
*Hey! For linguistics that's pretty eXtreme, yo! Not everyone can go bonkers over basmati à la Mike Nelson.
**Unlike a French paper I wrote last year, on the topic of the ideal king. For a rough draft my title was Le roi idéal. et tout ça, and that also ended up being the title for the final copy. I think I got an A- on that paper.
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Date: 2006-04-10 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 06:51 pm (UTC)