This book offers a systematic acoustic phonetic analysis of both language and dialect death in the region of Bearn, southwestern France. Focusing on Bearnais, a localised dialect of Gascon which is under pressure from French, the author explores the socio-political process of language shift, whereby members of a speech community cease to speak their indigenous language in favour of an incoming dominant language. Gascon is at an advanced stage of this process, making its remaining speakers excellent candidates for the study of language obsolescence, and this unique study will be of interest to researchers working in a broad range of disciplines, including language variation and change, language and dialect contact, Occitan and French, sociophonetics and phonology.
