A language goes extinct roughly every two weeks. Each one takes with it a complete, irreplaceable theory of how to carve up the world: kinship systems, ecological knowledge, entire grammatical categories no other language has. This course covers the fieldwork of documentation, the politics and real successes of revitalization (Hebrew, Māori, Hawaiian), and what is actually lost, not sentimentally but structurally, when the last speaker dies.
IACSInt'l Academy for Consciousness Studies