Threatened
morphology
Pluractional forms are threatened in many
languages; i.e. younger
informants do not know them or only know them passively
The reasons are disputed; is it part of
general trend towards
simplification of morphology among increasingly urbanised youth?
Or is it that ‘you don’t speak
the language properly until you are xx years old’?
Perversely, semantic shifts and suppletive
plurals are probably
conserved better than those with predictable meanings (clearly you can speak and be
understood without
using them)
But it seems likely much of the data
recorded here will not
be recoverable in a couple of decades although the languages will still be spoken