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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Robin Sabino
Robin Sabino
Affiliation:
Department of EnglishAuburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5203
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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)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , September 1994 , pp. 495 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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