The Evolving European Language System: A Theory of Communication Potential and Language Competition

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Abstract
Modern Western languages were shaped in the course of European state formation. A number of languages each came to be closely associated with a national state and as a result became particu larly "robust." This prior development, the theme of the first section of this paper, very much shapes the dynamics of the ongoing rivalry between national languages in the contemporary European context. Moreover, the process of language unification at the national level contributes to an understanding of the process of language rivalry and accommodation now proceeding at the subcontinental level, which forms the subject of the second section. There, a measure is presented of the communication potential of a language or repertory of languages for a speaker in the system: its Q-value. People will add to their repertoire the language that most increases this Q-value. The historical and analytic strands are combined in a third section, which uses data from censuses and question naire research to assess the competitive relations between the larger European languages and to adumbrate which language will come to predominate.