LING 224 “Endangered Languages” course

This is a course on “Endangered Languages” that will, for the first time, be open to all University of Alberta students. A short description of the course follows:

Increased awareness of the possibility of losing forever the world’s linguistic diversity has led to the establishment of “language endangerment and maintenance” as an area of study in its own right. In this course, we will examine the global phenomenon of language endangerment and learn about the various social, political and economic factors underlying language shift (causes), the ways in which endangerment impacts linguistic structure, communities, and society in general (consequences), and the efforts of linguists and communities to stem the tide of language loss (responses).

Students taking the class will, by the end of it, be able to:

1. Contrast the different socio-political and economic factors underlying language endangerment
2. Identify some of the consequences of language endangerment (e.g. attrition, obsolescence)
3. Compare the two main responses to language endangerment (i.e. language documentation and language revitalization)
4. Prepare a language vitality assessment for an endangered language