THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

LANGUAGES
Catambacan, Angela
Dumdum, Mariell Nicole
 01
LIFE
02
DEATH
• COMMUNICATION AND ITS
CHANNELS
• COMMUNICATION AMONG
NONHUMAN PRIMATES
• WHEN DOES A
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
BECOME LANGUAGE?
• DESIGN FEATURES OF
LANGUAGE
• LANGUAGE AS AN
EVOLUTIONARY PRODUCT
 “Life and death are one
thread, the same line viewed
from different sides.”
— LAO TZU
 01.

LIFE
COMMUNICATION AND
ITS CHANNELS
Model of Communication (1940s)

1. The Sender (Source)

2. The Message
3. The Channel
4. The Receiver (Destination)
5. The Effect
The most
common and - Acoustic channel
effective - Optical channel
channel of
- Tactile channel
human
communication: - Olfactory channel
 01.

LIFE
COMMUNICATION
AMONG NONHUMAN
PRIMATES
1. Keith J. Hayes and Catherine Hayes
(1940s)
• Female chimpanzee
• Viki
• Six years
• Four (4) words (mama,
papa, cup, and up)
 2. Washoe
• Female chimpanzee
• Gestural languages used
by the American deaf
• Five years of training”
first two years – thirty (30)
signs
end of the project – 150
signs
 3. Sarah
• Female chimpanzee
• Write and read by means of
plastic tokens
• Acquired a vocabulary of about
130 terms
• Conditional relation if-then
If Sarah takes a banana, then
Mary won’t give chocolate to Sarah.
 01.

LIFE
WHEN DOES A
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
BECOME LANGUAGE?
When did language
originate?
 On the off potential for success that it has for a bunch of discrete vocal sounds, useless
without anyone else, that can be hung together to deliver higher-request units ("words")
blessed with traditional yet self-assertive implications, and, further, if such a framework
makes it workable for its clients to create a boundless number of remarkable remarks about
events eliminated in time just as space, at that point the majority of the few million years of
primate presence would have been languageless.
- Communication systems of the earliest hominids likely employed signals that were auditory,
olfactory and tactile.

- One may refer to the communication system that preceded full- fledged language as
prelanguage.
 01.

LIFE
DESIGN FEATURES OF LAGUAGE
Charles Hockett (1916-2000)
1. Vocal- auditory channel
2. Broadcast transmission
and directional reception
3. Rapid fading
4. Interchangeability
5. Complete feedback
6. Specialization
Charles Hockett (1916-2000)
7. Semanticity
8. Arbitrariness
9. Discreteness
10.Displacement
11. Productivity/openness
12.Duality of patterning
13.Cultural (or traditional)
transmission.
Charles Hockett (1916-2000)

14.Prevarication
15.Reflexiveness
16.Learnability
 01.

LIFE
LANUAGE AS AN
EVOLUTIONARY PRODUCT
 Two big questions:

1. Did language suddenly develop all at once, or was

it a gradual process?

2. Did language develop under selective forces

directly acting upon it, or was it secondary by-
product of evolutionary processes?
 02.
DEATH
Do you believe
that human
extinction
is linked to the
death of
language?
 LANGUAGE DEATH

-is typically the final outcome of language shift

- is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each

generation learning less and less of the language
 TWO RESULT OF
LANGUAGE DEATH
1. Extinct Languages
-considered extinct when non living
person can speak them
 2. DEAD LANGUAGES
-considered "dead" when they simply have
no more native speakers, even though
they still may be used in some way.

LATIN HEBREW
DIFFERENT TYPES
OF LANGUAGE
DEATH
 Gradual language death
- most common way of language disappear
-slowly, over a period of time
-this normally happens when one language come
into contact with a higher prestige language.
International
National Language
Language
Provincial
Eleven languages are dying.
Languages FILIPINO
Large Philippine languages: PRISTIGE
Kapampangan, Pangasinan,
FILIPINO PRISTIGE
PROVINCIAL LANGUAGE
Bikol, and Ilokano
LANGUAGES
– are dying, some LANGUAGE
faster than
others. (ENGLISH)
(ENGLISH)
Medium-sized languages: Ibanag, Itawis, and Sambal.
 Bottom-to-top language death
is when a language ceases to be used as a
medium of conversation, but may survive in
special use like religion or folk songs.

eg.
LATIN-which basically no longer used outside of
religious and ceremonial contexts
 Sudden Language Death

- this occurs when all or almost all of the

speaker of a language suddenly die as a
result of disaster or violence.

Took place in the 1830's in Tasmania

during The Black War where all the
native inhabitants wiped out by
European colonist.
 Radical language death
occurs wery rapidly under political repression or the treat of
violence.
-suddenly stop using their own languages.
Why should we
care about
language death?
 Salamat hin madamo!

DAGHANG SALAMAT!

THANK YOU!!
MARAMING SALAMAT!

Salámat na marháy!
 REFERENCES
Stanlaw, J., Adachi, N., & Salzmann, Z. (2017). The Development and
Evolution of Language: Language Birth, Language Growth, and
Language Death. In J. Stanlaw, N. Adachi, & Z. Salzmann, Language,
Culture, and Society (pp. 117-144). New York: Westview Press.