During the preparation of this volume, a participant suggested that the resulting collection might represent a “state of the art” milestone roughly comparable to Wanner and Gleitman's (1982) Language acquisition volume. Looking closely at that suggestion is perhaps a little dispiriting, but it's also revealing.

The subfield of child language is designated as foremost specialty by a fair number of linguists these days. There are at least two journals (The Journal of Child Language, First Language) devoted to the subject, and there are well-established annual conferences, in addition to special sessions, workshops, and so forth, at larger meetings. Researchers in child language have enough recognized outlets and enough predictably scheduled get-togethers so that they can identify one another and exchange findings and ideas with relative ease and speed. The impulse for this volume was the lack of those things (as yet) in the field of language obsolescence.

Few of the contributors to the first two parts of this book would identify themselves as specialists in some one particular area which this volume could be said to be devoted to. There is even some difficulty in locating any such area: “obsolescence”, “contraction”, and “death” all fall short of a precise (perhaps even an acceptable) rubric; see especially the commentaries, but various authors in Parts I and II wrestle with this problem as well. Not only is there uncertainty about the designation of the field, but in addition other terminological uncertainties hamper communication among researchers.