Facing facts and facing theories

If nothing is done about it, almost all Aboriginal languages will be dead by the year 2000. Even the two most likely survivors, the Yolngu languages of north-east Arnhem Land and the Western Desert language may not last long beyond that date. Most of us who have worked for some time in the field of Aboriginal languages would agree with statements like this. However, if we were asked to show why we thought a particular language was going to die, we would often not be able to give a very coherent account of our reasoning. Nor would any two researchers necessarily come up with the same kinds of answers about how and why a language dies.

In recent study of a dying language in Australia, Schmidt (1985) was unable to give any general theory of language death that would fit the many different linguistic and sociocultural features of the different languages that have died or are dying. She points out that linguists can predict neither when nor what types of changes will occur in language contact situations generally, despite some decades of impressive work on the subject. She also notes that sociocultural factors are more important than linguistic factors in determining whether a language survives or not.