Language endangerment is characterized by variability, as is clear from the above. This is not limited to the diversity of factors involved in its emergence to varying degrees or to the diverse speaker types that develop and the corresponding differences within the speech community. As Sasse (1992b) recognizes, language endangerment can also cause changes in the structure of the minority language, a process he refers to as language decay. These structural consequences can affect all descriptive linguistic levels, from phonology to syntax. As the language becomes more endangered, speakers in turn become less fluent and develop linguistic insecurity which Rottet (2001, 25) describes as a breakdown of linguistic norms making speakers lose their sense of ‘correctness’. This is one important reason for the amount of variability found on the structural level in an endangerment situation. Speakers are no longer certain which form is grammatical and often use different words and constructions in free variation, that is their choice does not reflect any social variables, as is usually the case with regional, social or gender variation (Palosaari and Campbell 2011).
Often the first observable effect is frequent code-switching. Code-switching is common among proficient bilinguals and does not necessarily indicate a language endangerment situation. Neither does it imply a lack of competence in either language involved. Myers-Scotton and Jake (1995) show that it obeys structural restrictions. One language, which they term the MATRIX LANGUAGE, provides grammatical/functional morphemes while the EMBEDDED LANGUAGE only provides lexical content morphemes in MIXED CONSTITUENTS. In the case of endangered languages, the dominant language serves as the matrix language, hence providing the grammatical frame but also many lexemes. Lexical borrowings are not at all unusual in ‘healthy’ languages and can enrich the vocabulary. In the case of endangered languages “the influx of non-native forms tends to be pervasive” (Aikhenvald 2012, 101) and goes hand in hand with a decline in the speakers’ lexicon in the non-dominant language. As the availability of native lexemes is reduced, non-native lexemes are used for greater ease of communication. This development goes beyond code-switching and reduces speakers’ knowledge of the language as well as its value as a means of communication. It illustrates one main characteristic of structural change that occurs because of language endangerment, namely the LOSS of sounds, morphs, lexemes or structures. At the same time new elements can be introduced from a dominant language, e.g. vocabulary items and structural features. It appears, on the surface, as if the changes to be found in endangered languages
are to some extent ‘random’, with some elements being lost while others are added to the language.
It is true that language change in an endangered language is hard to predict but some observable tendencies are described in the literature. Indeed, loss remains the overarching theme on a structural level. REDUCTION is usually taken to refer to the decline in native vocabulary described above. SHRINKAGE, on the other hand, refers to the loss of styles and registers in a language. This can be most clearly illustrated by some languages of Aboriginal Australia, where the cultural taboo relation between a person and their in- laws is reflected in a specific style of speech to be used around them. Dixon (1980) reports that in Dyirbal, an indigenous language spoken in Queensland, North East Australia, this style is grammatically almost identical to regular speech but makes use of a completely separate vocabulary. Tsunoda (2006) suspects a similar system for the neighboring language Warrungu which cannot be confirmed, as the remaining speaker did remember the existence of such a style but had no knowledge of the words. Tsunoda (2006, 98) takes this to indicate that such styles are lost relatively early in the process, as the same speaker was generally fluent in Warrungu.
On the structural level, (morpho-) syntactic structures can be subject to loss as well. Schmidt (1985) provides an example from Dyirbal, where ergativity was lost in younger speakers’ language (Young Dyirbal, hereafter YD). She reports the REDUCTION of allomorphy in Dyirbal case morphology before the ergative was lost completely. Schmidt (1985) describes five stages until the complete absence of ergative marking, beginning with the presence of nine allomorphic conditions, which were gradually reduced to just one, the suffix -gu. When found in young speakers’ Dyirbal, this suffix no longer marked ergative case. She found that younger speakers would follow the pattern of the dominant language, English, relying on word order for the identification of subjects rather than the ergative-absolutive structure of traditional Dyirbal. Since subjects of intransitive verbs are not distinguished from those of transitive verbs in this new system, she assumes an underlying nominate-accusative structure despite the continued use of the affix -gu. Similarly, the locative suffix, which has seven allomorphs in traditional Dyirbal, was reduced to just one or two in younger people’s speech and ultimately replaced by a prepositional construction similar to the ones found in English (Schmidt 1985).
American Finnish (AF) has a different socio-linguistic background, being a contact variety of a stable language spoken by immigrants in the USA. The structural effects observed by Larmouth (1974) nevertheless are quite similar, as speakers seem to loose morphological case markings on adjectives, using case affixes only on the associated
nouns. The loss of morphological case marking appears to be a possible structural consequence of language endangerment, especially for peripheral cases as Schmidt (1985) documents for Dyirbal, where the morphological marking of locative, allative, possessive and instrumental was replaced by the generalized ergative suffix and analytic constructions. In this language the whole ergative-absolutive system seems to be lost, thus affecting not only the morphological form but also the structural make-up of the language.
Often, the loss of one form or structure does not constitute a full loss, as the grammatical distinction remains at least for an intermediate period. Where several means exist to express the same thing, speakers tend to favor just one in an endangered language. This can mean the loss of alternative expressions or their gradual assimilation to another, preferred construction. In other words, alternations in the linguistic system are eliminated in favor of REGULARIZATION. Dorian (1973), (1980) describes this SIMPLIFICATION for East Sutherland Gaelic by referring to the passive construction. Passive is marked in this variety of Gaelic by two possible constructions, the bith(‘be’)-passive and the dol(‘go’)-passive. The former construction employs a subject pronoun and a preposition while the latter does not use an overt pronoun but involves lenition to mark phi-features. Dorian noticed that some speakers would use the characteristics of the bith- passive in a dol-construction, adding a pronoun and preposition. This trend clearly corresponded to the age of the speakers. Older speakers produced the ‘correct’ traditional form of the dol-passive. Only speakers over the age of 80 did so 100% of the time with the changes becoming more frequent the younger the speakers were. By creating this structure analogous to the bith-passive construction, young speakers simplified their system as it allowed them to disperse with the subtle and difficult phonological change that is required to indicate phi-features of the subject in the subject- less construction. Phonological simplification can be observed in the loss of phonological distinctions as suggested by Anderson (1983). Palosaari and Campbell (2011, 112) give the example of the indigenous Central American language Pipil spoken in El Salvador that had contrastive long/short vowels, a distinction which many speakers have lost.
Simplification and regularization, as described above, do not necessarily contradict the notion of variability as previously mentioned. While it is true that the former suggests the loss of alternative forms and the latter implies the co-existence of several forms, which appear in free variation, simplification happens over time. It appears plausible that individual speakers would go through a stage in which they do not know or follow the rules of distribution for allomorphs and allophones or the ‘correct’
properties of syntactic constructions. They may use them in free variation as described by Palosaari and Campbell (2011) before ultimately settling on a pattern or losing the grammatical category completely.
Campbell and Muntzel (1989) note that the INTRODUCTIONOF NEW MATERIAL into the language is not limited to vocabulary items, as described earlier in this section. Instead, they argue that structural features of the dominant language can enter the endangered language’s grammar. Their point is illustrated with an example from American Finnish, which employs overt agents in impersonal passives and non-finite complements of nouns where standard Finnish does not. The replacement of the ergative by the nominative- accusative system in Dyirbal as described by Schmidt (1985) could be argued to prove a similar point, though not as clearly as there is no overt marking of a new case system. The clearer case in YD is that of English prepositions replacing locative case marking, which also illustrates a development towards analytic language structure rather than syntheticity. The new function YD speakers assign to some bound morphemes, such as the comitative suffix –bila that now serves to mark instrumental case as well, represents another form of INNOVATION to be found in the changed grammar of an endangered language (Schmidt 1985). The replacement of structural features will likely go hand in hand with an intermediate period of variability in which both structures are used within one community or even by the same speaker.
Every case of language endangerment is unique, as the cultures, people, languages and circumstances involved are diverse. Nevertheless, some changes have been observed in several endangered languages and Rottet (2001) proposes a list of possible generalizations for changes that cannot be directly attributed to a contact language. The development from a synthetic to a more analytic linguistic system (1) seems to prevail and has been described above for YD. The reduction of inflectional morphology (2) is also clearly illustrated by YD and AF above. The elimination of redundancy (3) is observable for example in the loss of adjective-noun agreement in AF. Fantasy morphology (4) is a rarely observed phenomenon described by Sasse (1992a) for which he provides an example from Arvanitika. Speakers who lack the knowledge of the correct form make up morphemes that are not at all part of the language of fluent speakers but sound like a potential element of the language. The loss of avoidance styles in Indigenous Australian languages illustrates the reduction of stylistic variation (5) and phonological changes (6) were described above for Pipil. Extensive non-meaningful variation (7) refers to the use of alternate forms and structures where their distribution is conditioned neither by linguistic (e.g. allomorphic) nor social variables. Lastly, Rottet lists the loss of productive
word formation (8) and the avoidance of multiclausal sentences (9). It remains unclear if these effects occur in any particular order cross-linguistically hence suggesting an increasing degree of pathology associated with their appearance. Tsunoda (2006) for example concludes from the study of Warrungu that stylistic variation, point five in Rottet’s account, is lost at an early stage of language endangerment. Productive word- formation, his point 8, can only be replaced by borrowing from another language to account for new domains or speaking about things that the language has no words for in another language. Such behavior has been reported for multiple endangered languages and whether it constitutes the loss of productive word formation would depend on whether they coin any new words at all. The complexity and heterogeneity of language endangerment make it unlikely that structural effects will appear in a rigid chronological order.
Finally, it should be made clear that many structural changes occurring in endangered languages are not unusual per se. They do not uniquely result from language endangerment. Rather, these are natural changes one would expect to find in any language, such as the incorporation of lexemes from a contact language, the loss of phonological distinctions or the reduction of allomorphy. Crystal (2000) attests a different “extent, range, rate and quality” to the changes occurring in endangered languages as opposed to natural language change. In his view, the processes themselves remain similar but they occur quicker, more frequently, at several linguistic levels at the same time and are more radical than usual. Rottet (2001) agrees that the changes found in endangered languages are regular processes that occur in a higher than usual density. He distinguishes between changes that are the result of language contact and hence externally caused, and internally caused process of restructuring and simplification. Teasing apart those motivations is difficult in any language contact study and especially so in the case of endangered languages where contact often is a big part of what causes endangerment and effects cannot be linearly traced back to a single cause. It is hardly possible to determine with certainty which changes would have occurred had the language not been endangered but all other factors remained the same.