ABSTRACT
Although most textbooks of historical linguistics mention the extinction of such languages as Gothic, Hittite, and Etruscan, not many descriptions of the actual processes of language obsolescence were undertaken until the 1970s. Even though the socio-historic setting for the loss of languages on their native soil is obviously different from that of the demise of ethnic, migrant languages, very similar linguistic processes are operative in both cases. This chapter outlines a few case histories before proceeding to characterise South African Bhojpuri as a dying language. Case histories of the second type of language death–or language shift–suggest that the external circumstances are very similar: languages on their way to extinction are first used in a near-diglossic situation with the dominant language to which they eventually lose out. M. Mithun and R. Henry studying obsolescence of a very different type of language–Oklahoma Iroquois—find few neologisms in the vocabulary.
