Rare and endangered—languages or features? An African perspective

Motivated by the hypothesis that rare and endangered languages exhibit a higher ratio of unusual features than less uncommon ones, this paper uses four case studies to demonstrate that the hypothesis is not born out for African languages. There is no correlation between the rarity of a language and the rarity of areas of its structure. The reasons for the independence of the presence of unusual features from the rarity of the language in which they occur are the following: first, we lack sufficient data and unanimity on cross-linguistic categories and features for a systematic appraisal of their rarity; second, we lack sufficient linguistic information on the majority of the world’s languages, and especially on African languages; and third, features can be rare or endangered and change regardless of the status of the language in which they occur.