Endangered language varieties: Vernacular speech and linguistic standardization in Brazilian Portuguese

THE CENTRAL MOTIVATIONS for the attention paid to endangered languages by linguists and social scientists are twofold: above all there is concern for language as the embodiment or manifestation of the culture and history of the speakers and for the risk to that social and cultural heritage of a people that language loss entails. In addition, there is the professional concern of linguists at the loss of typological evidence about human linguistic capacity and specific evidence about the nature of the endangered language. And the preferred resolution for both of these concerns is to promote the preservation- or failing that, the documentation-of languages at risk.