Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 41 views

    Dead Languages: Assignment 9

    Uploaded by

    Syed Tahir Hussain
    The document discusses dead or extinct languages and provides examples such as Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan. It notes that a dead language no longer has any native speakers who acquired the language naturally as their primary language. While Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan no longer have native speakers, Hebrew was revived in the early 20th century and now has around 5 million native speakers in Israel, although the language has changed from the ancient form. The document asks if all these examples should be considered equally dead or if some distinctions can be made.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Dead Languages: Assignment 9

    Uploaded by

    Syed Tahir Hussain
    41 views1 page
    The document discusses dead or extinct languages and provides examples such as Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan. It notes that a dead language no longer has any native speakers who acquired the language naturally as their primary language. While Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan no longer have native speakers, Hebrew was revived in the early 20th century and now has around 5 million native speakers in Israel, although the language has changed from the ancient form. The document asks if all these examples should be considered equally dead or if some distinctions can be made.

    Original Description:

    Assignment09-DeadLanguages

    Original Title

    Assignment09-DeadLanguages

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses dead or extinct languages and provides examples such as Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan. It notes that a dead language no longer has any native speakers who acquired the language naturally as their primary language. While Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan no longer have native speakers, Hebrew was revived in the early 20th century and now has around 5 million native speakers in Israel, although the language has changed from the ancient form. The document asks if all these examples should be considered equally dead or if some distinctions can be made.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    41 views1 page

    Dead Languages: Assignment 9

    Uploaded by

    Syed Tahir Hussain
    The document discusses dead or extinct languages and provides examples such as Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan. It notes that a dead language no longer has any native speakers who acquired the language naturally as their primary language. While Latin, Barbareño, and Oscan no longer have native speakers, Hebrew was revived in the early 20th century and now has around 5 million native speakers in Israel, although the language has changed from the ancient form. The document asks if all these examples should be considered equally dead or if some distinctions can be made.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 1

    11 April 2013 Aaron J.

    Dinkin
    Linguistics 1 adinkin1@swarthmore.edu

    Assignment 9:
    Dead languages

    Due 18 April

    The term dead (or extinct) language refers to a language that no longer has any
    native speakersi.e., there are no longer any speakers living who grew up
    learning it as their primary language and therefore acquired full competence in
    its grammar, via the native human language-learning instinct.

    Here are some examples of languages often regarded as dead:

    Latin, the native language of ancient Rome, and the ancestor of the modern
    Romance family.
    Barbareo, a native language of the Chumashan family in Southern
    California. Over the past 400 years the communities that spoke Barbareo
    and other Chumashan languages gradually abandoned them and switched
    to Spanish and then English, so that younger members of the community
    did not grow up speaking Chumashan. The last known native speaker of
    Barbareo died in the 1960s.
    Oscan, a language of the Italic family spoken in ancient southern Italy, in
    roughly the same time period as early and classical Latin. As the influence
    of the Roman Empire increased, the people of southern Italy gradually
    switched to using Latin; Oscan had fallen out of use by around the year 100.

    Hebrew was considered a dead language for centuries, having no native
    speakers, although (like Latin) many people studied it for the purpose of reading
    ancient texts written in it. Beginning in the early 20th century, a concerted effort
    was made to revive it and raise children as native speakers of Hebrew; this effort
    was successful, and today it has about 5 million native speakers, mostly in Israel.
    The language spoken today by these speakers, however, differs in various ways
    (grammatically, phonologically, lexically, etc.) from the ancient language.

    Are all of these languagesLatin, Barbareo, Oscan, and Hebrew before its
    successful revitalization in the 20th centurydead languages in the same way?
    Are they all dead, but in different ways or to different degrees? Would it make
    more sense to apply the description dead to only some of them?

    As usual, answer in an essay of 500 words or so.

    You might also like