Building strategies to ensure language coexistence in presence of bilingualism

摘要

For 20 years many authors have attempted to model language competition. Some models involve two different languages, others include also a bilingual population. The issues are to understand one language extinction or to determine in which parameter range coexistence is possible. A key parameter is the prestige of one language compare to the other. If this parameter remains constant, coexistence is not sustainable. However, prestige may vary with time. In this article, thanks to the viability theory concepts and tools, we study a set of prestige variations which would allow language coexistence in presence of a bilingual population. Among this set, we emphasise slow viable evolutions with the lowest prestige variations that guarantee coexistence.