Language maintenance and language shift as a field of inquiry: A definition of the field and suggestions for its further development

The study of language maintenance and language shift is concerned with the relationship between change or stability in habitual language use, on the one hand, and ongoing psychological, social or cultural processes, on the other hand, when populations differing in language are in contact with each other. That languages (or language variants) SOMETIMES replace each other, among SOME speakers, particularly in CERTAIN types or domains of language behavior, under SOME conditions of intergroup contact, has long aroused curiosity and comment (46). However, it is only in quite recent years that this topic has been recognized as a field of systematic inquiry among professional students of language behavior.

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