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Applied Linguistics 1999 20(4):481-502; doi:10.1093/applin/20.4.481
© 1999 by Oxford University Press
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Writing Romani: the pragmatics of codification in a stateless language

Y Matras

Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK E-mail: y.matras@man.ac.uk

Romani is a stateless, non-territorial minority language with no written tradition. The present paper offers a survey of recent codification efforts. Codification is regional and decentralized, with only marginal international orientation or institutional commitment. Texts tend to show moderate or elaborate adjustment of the majority language alphabet, with occasional 'soft' neologisms. In a pragmatic corpus analysis, three action-oriented functions of Romani codification are identified: a communicative function, an emblematic function, and a mobilizing-rallying function. Overlaps among those functions, and emerging, potentially autonomous functions, are identified for two domains: political journalism and educational material.


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