Endangered Languages of East Asia: Language Obsolescence in China, Japan, Siberia, and Taiwan

This book surveys language obsolescence in a number of endangered and minority languages of East Asia to highlight commonalities and differences of the process of language loss in distinct sociolinguistic contexts and time periods. What shapes and magnitude can language loss have in East Asian endangered languages? How does it differ with regards to the languages' historical development and sociolinguistic environment? This book surveys a number of minority and, in most cases, endangered languages spoken in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Russia which all face, or have faced in their recent history, loss of language features. The contributions in this publication present you with different cases of obsolescence attested throughout East Asia and highlight how this process, though often leading back to common causes, is in fact a multifaceted reality with diverse repercussions on grammar and linguistic vitality.