Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: The article is an in-depth review of Petar Kehayov’s monograph The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death: Evidence from Minor Finnic (De Gruyter Mouton, 2017). The book investigates the development of mood and modality in four moribund Finnic languages spoken in the Russian Federation: Votic, Ingrian, Central Lude, and Eastern Seto. After a detailed summary of the book, I discuss a number of issues relating to (a) the semantic map used to analyze the modal meanings; (b) the difference between language death-related changes and “regular” language change; and (c) the explanation of the observed patterns in terms of conceptual complexity. On the last point, I suggest that usage frequency may provide a better explanation for some of the observed changes.
Source: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia
Author: Sune Gregersen
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Award: G4598214296
OpenAlex ID: W3035592188