Why Minor, Not Major?

• Authors: Ewa Łukaszyk
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Why Minor, Not Major?Even if the probability that some of these languages might one day be reborn from the ashes and reintroduced to everyday communication is very low, we still need to preserve at least some trace of humanity’s linguistic diversity. It is a task that concerns all of us, not only the peoples whose direct heritage these languages are. We are still unable to answer many of the fundamental questions in linguistics, concerning such aspects as the origin of human speech and the generaltraits or structures that underlie all human forms of communication. If languages continue dying at the pace they do, soon we will have no material left to carry on this quest any further.These questions, central to the humanities today, justify the choice of the topic for this issue of "Colloquia Humanistica". The joint efforts of the authors who contributed to it, evidently cannot cover either the vastness of the problems, or the geographic diversity of the world’s minor cultures, literatures and languages. Nonetheless, some examples have been chosen, illustrating the research problems that are currently topical and bringing to the general academic consciousness cultural realities that we are still less familiar with.

Keywords

EN

minor cultures; minority

• Publisher: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
• Journal: Colloquia Humanistica
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 2

Dates

published

2013

online

2015-06-13

Contributors

author

Ewa Łukaszyk

Identifiers

DOI

10.11649/ch.2013.015