The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death: Evidence from Minor Finnic

Description

Research into the “grammar of language death” is often biased toward formal processes (e.g. paradigmatic levelling). In this study the author changes the perspective and shows that the relative susceptibility of linguistic elements to loss, change and innovation in language death circumstances can be dependent on meaning and thus organized along semantic notions rather than along structure. Acknowledgments Table of contents Transliteration and transcription conventions Abbreviations of languages, dialects and names of settlements (in Russian and in the respective Finnic variety) Abbreviations of linguistic notions List of figures. List of maps. List of tables 1. Introduction 2 Language death: current state of the research 3. Mood and modality: definitions, semantic values and their organization 4. Mood and modality meets language death 5. The languages studied 6. Methods of inquiry 7. Intensity of the language contact and the degree of contraction outside MM-domain 8. MM in the receding varieties 9. Toward a uniform account of the phenomena observed in the domain of MM 10. Conclusions Appendices: examples of elicited linguistic data Appendix I. Q5: materials from Eastern Seto Appendix II. Non-controlled elicitation: materials from Central Lude References Language index: Finnic varieties Subject index