Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity.

Language diversity is under threat. While each language is subject to specific social, demographic and political pressures, there may also be common threatening processes. We use an analysis of 6,511 spoken languages with 51 predictor variables spanning aspects of population, documentation, legal recognition, education policy, socioeconomic indicators and environmental features to show that, counter to common perception, contact with other languages per se is not a driver of language loss. However, greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased endangerment. Higher average years of schooling is also associated with greater endangerment, evidence that formal education can contribute to loss of language diversity. Without intervention, language loss could triple within 40 years, with at least one language lost per month. To avoid the loss of over 1,500 languages by the end of the century, urgent investment is needed in language documentation, bilingual education programmes and other community-based programmes.

Fickle fricatives: Fricative and stop perception in Gurindji Kriol, Roper Kriol, and Standard Australian English.

This paper uses a 2AFC identification task experiment to test listener perception of voiceless fricative-stop contrasts with minimal pairs modified along a 10-step continuum. Here, the authors focus on the uniqueness and near-uniformity of the phonological systems found in Australia. The languages involved in this study include Roper Kriol (an English-lexifier creole language), Gurindji Kriol (a mixed language derived from Gurindji and Kriol), with Standard Australian English (Indo-European) used as a baseline. Results reveal that just over 50% of the Roper Kriol and Gurindji Kriol listeners identified differences in the stop-fricative pairs with a high degree of consistency while nearly a quarter consistently identified the fricative-like stimuli as such, but showed random responses to the stop-like stimuli. The remaining participants showed a preference toward the fricatives across the entire continuum. The authors conclude that the fricative-stop contrast is not critical to the functionality of the phonologies in Roper Kriol or Gurindji Kriol, which could explain the high degree of variability. In addition, there is some evidence that the degree of exposure to English may have an effect on the degree of contrastability.