Bilingual Dictionary Drafting. The Example of German-Basque, a Medium-density Language Pair

Edited by Andrea Abel, Chiara Vettori, Natascia Ralli.

Experimental Economics Meets Language Choice

Roughly one half of World's languages are in danger of extinction. The endangered languages, spoken by minorities, typically compete with powerful languages such as En- glish or Spanish. Consequently, the speakers of minority languages have to consider that not everybody can speak their language, converting the language choice into strategic,coordination-like situation. We show experimentally that the displacement of minority languages may be partially explained by the imperfect information about the linguistic type of the partner, leading to frequent failure to coordinate on the minority language even between two speakers who can and prefer to use it. The extent of miscoordination correlates with how minoritarian a language is and with the real-life linguistic condition of subjects: the more endangered a language the harder it is to coordinate on its use, and people on whom the language survival relies the most acquire behavioral strategies that lower its use. Our game-theoretical treatment of the issue provides a new perspective for linguistic policies.

Estrategiak hizkuntzen ikaskuntzan: EAEko eta Norvegiako ikasleen ezaugarriak

Euskaraz: Gaur egun, munduan ingeles hizkuntzaren garrantzia dela eta, hainbat herrialdeen lehen hezkuntzan, bigarren edo atzerriko hizkuntza bezala, ikasten den ikasgaia da. Hala ere, herrialde guztietako biztanlerian ez da gaitasun berdina lortzen. Hizkuntza ikas estrategien erabilerak, xede-hizkuntzaren gaitasunak lortzeko erabakigarriak izan daitezkeela kontuan izanda, lan honen helburua, ingelesa ikasterakoan, testuinguru ezberdinak duten bi lurraldeen (Norvegia-Bodø eta Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa) ikas-estrategien erabilera aztertzea izan da, lehen hezkuntzako bi taldeetan, metodo deskriptibo konparatiboa erabiliz. Emaitzek erakutsi zuten, norvegiar taldeko ikasleek euskal taldekoek baino maizago ikas-estrategiak erabiltzen zituztela. Honekin, testuingurua eta ikas estrategiak erabiltzearen arteko korrelazio posible bat iradoki daiteke.

On innate and specific aspects of human language

Mixel Aurnague, Kepa Korta and Jesus M. Larrazabal (eds.)

A Brief Grammar of Euskara, the Basque Language

This is a short grammar of the Basque language, or Euskara as it is called by its speakers. What follows is a partial description of the syntax of Euskara. The text has been arranged in the following fashion: there is an index where you can find the distribution of topics. Within each of the topics, an effort has been made to arrange information from general to specific, so that as you read into a given section, you will get into more details about the topic being under discussion. This grammar hopes to be useful to a wide variety of users. Therefore, it will probably not satisfy anyone completely: Those who want a quick 'feel' for the language will be disappointed by the slow and messy details the text dives into. Those who want a detailed, professional description will be disappointed by the lack of depth in the discussion. The text hopes to sit somewhere in the middle, and if it tells too much to those who want to know a little, and too little to those who want to know a lot, then it will have done its job.