"A language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers, especially if the language also has no living descendants."
It studies the social and cultural factors that influenced the development and use of dead languages, including their significance in religious, political, and other contexts.
Historical linguistics: This branch of linguistics studies the evolution of languages over time, including dead languages and their influence on modern languages.
Language change and language death: This topic looks at how languages change and eventually die, exploring the complex linguistic, social, and cultural factors that contribute to these processes.
Corpus linguistics: This field uses computer technology to analyze large collections of written or spoken language (corpora) to identify patterns and relationships among language features.
Phonetics and phonology: Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds, while phonology focuses on how these sounds are organized and used in language.
Dialectology: This area of study examines regional and social variations in language, including factors such as accent, vocabulary, and grammatical structures.
Sociolinguistic variation: This topic explores how language use varies across different social and cultural contexts, taking into account factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and class.
Language and identity: This area of study looks at the role that language plays in shaping personal and social identities, including how language use can reflect or reinforce social norms and power dynamics.
Language contact and multilingualism: This field examines how languages come into contact with one another, leading to borrowing, mixing, or creolization of linguistic features, as well as the skills and strategies involved in multilingual communication.
Language policy and planning: This topic deals with the way that governments, institutions, and communities make decisions about language use, education, and preservation, including issues such as language rights, language endangerment, and language revitalization.
Cognitive linguistics: This interdisciplinary field studies the relationship between language and thought, exploring how language shapes perception, memory, and reasoning processes.
Dialectology: The study of regional and social dialects of a particular language.
Socio-phonetics: The study of how social factors affect speech sounds and pronunciation.
Political sociolinguistics: The study of how language is used in political contexts and how political power affects language use and attitudes.
Language policy and planning: The study of how governments and other organizations make decisions about which languages to promote and how to do so.
Conversation analysis: The study of how people use language in conversation and how social factors affect this use.
Ethnography of communication: The study of how language is used in different cultural contexts and how communication varies across cultures.
Language and gender: The study of how language reflects and perpetuates gender stereotypes and how women and men use language differently.
Language and identity: The study of how language use and attitudes are linked to individual and group identities.
Bilingualism and multilingualism: The study of how people use and acquire two or more languages and how this affects language use and attitudes.
Historical sociolinguistics: The study of how language use and attitudes have changed over time.
"A dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers, such as Latin."
"A dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group, often undergoing a process of revitalization."
"Languages that have first-language speakers, known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts."
"As a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca, largely those of European countries."
"A total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide."
"One estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050."
"The process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift."
"It serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group."
"A process of revitalization."
"Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction."
"The language also has no living descendants."
"It is considered dead but not extinct."
"It is considered extinct."
"To contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts."
"Cultural assimilation and the favoring of foreign lingua francas."
"They are minor languages in danger of extinction."
"Some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050."
"Foreign lingua francas largely from European countries."
"The process of cultural assimilation."