Universals of Language Maintenance, Shift and Change

Since Greenberg the recognition of linguistic universals has been the backbone of language typology. Earlier Garvin had already divided universals into absolute and potential ones, the former uncontested cornerstones of linguistic theory, the latter commonly accepted generalizations among experienced professionals. The \u27universals\u27 to be discussed here are of the latter type: tried and tested principles of language maintenance and of language change, whose applicability has been established in numerous language contact and conflict situations in different communities. Among the principles displayed and discussed are the following: Fishman\u27s \u27intergenerational dislocation\u27 of language reproduction; Haugen\u27s \u27dialect fragmentation\u27 of languages vs. Garvin\u27s \u27unification\u27 and standardization; Fishman\u27s claim of the complementary distribution of language functions as a guarantee of stable bilingualism; Wölck\u27s disparate distribution of minority language maintenance along the social scale. Evidence for those and some other \u27universals\u27 of language maintenance and change will be provided from a 30-year longitudinal survey of Quechua-Spanish bilingualism in Peru; from Seneca- English bilingualism in New York; from studies of diglossia in Scotland and North Germany, of German-Hungarian bilingualism in Hungary from the Ladin survey in Italy and the Sorbian Project in Germany, and from the EUROMOSAIC survey