Abstract
This article theorizes on the relation between individual and societal language loss. In this context, the notion of relic variety will be introduced, describing a setting where a language is spoken by a very small number of speakers who live isolated from the main speech community and have not acquired literacy in their L1. The article focuses on attrition phenomena in a specific relic variety, i.e. Barossa German, a German-speaking enclave in South Australia. It analyses phenomena caused by lack of usage (hesitation phenomena, code-switching, semantic restructuring) as well as reduction processes, namely of the German case system. The results of the analysis demonstrate that in contrast to canonical attrition settings, in a relic variety morphological markers are only retained in constructions that had been either entrenched early in the acquisition processes or are very frequently used. It will be argued that the main factors influencing the reduction process are the variety of input, a decrease of normativity and the absence of a written variety.
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Language research and language community change: Italian Sign Language 1981–2013
- UK university students’ folk perceptions of spoken variation in English: the role of explicit and implicit attitudes
- Speaking or being Chinese: the case of South African-born Chinese
- Predictors of immigrants’ second-language proficiency: a Dutch study of immigrants with a low level of societal participation and second-language proficiency
- Second language development in a migrant context: Turkish community in the Netherlands
- The linguistic and political orientation of young Belarusian adults between East and West or Russian and Belarusian
- Studying sustainable bilingualism: comparing the choices of languages in Hungary’s six bilingual national minorities
- The language of power: a content analysis of presidential addresses in North America and the Former Soviet Union, 1993–2012
- Variation in Macau Cantonese: the case of initial and final segments
- Perceptions about being Japanese and Christian in Canada
- Language attrition, language contact and the concept of relic variety: the case of Barossa German
- Language competition: an economic theory of language learning and production
- Book Review
- Nancy C. Dorian: Small-language fates and prospects. Lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Language research and language community change: Italian Sign Language 1981–2013
- UK university students’ folk perceptions of spoken variation in English: the role of explicit and implicit attitudes
- Speaking or being Chinese: the case of South African-born Chinese
- Predictors of immigrants’ second-language proficiency: a Dutch study of immigrants with a low level of societal participation and second-language proficiency
- Second language development in a migrant context: Turkish community in the Netherlands
- The linguistic and political orientation of young Belarusian adults between East and West or Russian and Belarusian
- Studying sustainable bilingualism: comparing the choices of languages in Hungary’s six bilingual national minorities
- The language of power: a content analysis of presidential addresses in North America and the Former Soviet Union, 1993–2012
- Variation in Macau Cantonese: the case of initial and final segments
- Perceptions about being Japanese and Christian in Canada
- Language attrition, language contact and the concept of relic variety: the case of Barossa German
- Language competition: an economic theory of language learning and production
- Book Review
- Nancy C. Dorian: Small-language fates and prospects. Lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages