In almost every part of the world, minority languages are threatened with extinction. At the same time, dedicated efforts are being made to document endangered languages, to maintain them, and even to revive once-extinct languages.

The present volume examines a wide range of issues that concern language endangerment andlanguage revitalization. Among other things, it is shown that languages may be endangered to different degrees, endangerment situations in selected areas of the world are surveyed and definitions of language death and types of language death presented. The book also...

Warrongo is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language that used to be spoken in northeast Australia. This volume is largely based on the rich data recorded from the last fluent speaker. It details the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. In particular, it provides a truly scrutinizing description of syntactic ergativity - a phenomenon that is rare among the world's language. It also shows that, unlike some other Australian languages, Warrongo has noun phrases that are configurational. Overall this volume shows what can be documented of a language that has only one...

Five levels can be set up in clause linkage on semantico-pragmatic grounds. This book examines the use of clause linkage markers ("CLMs") for causals, conditionals and concessives in terms of these five levels, employing a framework that was proposed by Mie Tsunoda on the basis of Japanese data. It provides rich data on seventeen languages (including one dialect of Japanese) from North America, Central America, Oceania, Asia, Africa and Europe, and it shows that different CLMs -- even CLMs of the same semantic area, e.g. causals -- exhibit different distributions in terms of the five...