New Speakers and Language Revitalisation: Arpitan and Community (Re)formation

Today, it is uncontroversial to claim that France’s regional (minority) languages (RLs) are in decline. However, revitalisation movements have nonetheless continued to surface, and this chapter considers one by-product of such efforts: the emergence of new speakers in RL contexts. The term ‘new speaker’ refers to individuals who acquire the target language not through traditional transmission contexts (e.g. home, family), but instead as adults through language revitalisation initiatives. The chapter focuses on revitalisation efforts in the context of Francoprovençal, a severely endangered and understudied RL spoken transnationally across French, Italian and Swiss borders. A critical examination of current studies supplemented with recently collected empirical data shows new speakers to be central agents in a movement championing proto-nation-statehood across national borders, reorienting the region’s traditional sociolinguistic field

Recent and Projected Increases in Atmospheric CO2 Concentration Can Enhance Gene Flow between Wild and Genetically Altered Rice (Oryza sativa)

Although recent and projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide can alter plant phenological development, these changes have not been quantified in terms of floral outcrossing rates or gene transfer. Could differential phenological development in response to rising CO2 between genetically modified crops and wild, weedy relatives increase the spread of novel genes, potentially altering evolutionary fitness? Here we show that increasing CO2 from an early 20th century concentration (300 µmol mol−1) to current (400 µmol mol−1) and projected, mid-21st century (600 µmol mol−1) values, enhanced the flow of genes from wild, weedy rice to the genetically altered, herbicide resistant, cultivated population, with outcrossing increasing from 0.22% to 0.71% from 300 to 600 µmol mol−1. The increase in outcrossing and gene transfer was associated with differential increases in plant height, as well as greater tiller and panicle production in the wild, relative to the cultivated population. In addition, increasing CO2 also resulted in a greater synchronicity in flowering times between the two populations. The observed changes reported here resulted in a subsequent increase in rice dedomestication and a greater number of weedy, herbicide-resistant hybrid progeny. Overall, these data suggest that differential phenological responses to rising atmospheric CO2 could result in enhanced flow of novel genes and greater success of feral plant species in agroecosystems

Testing the Growth Rate Hypothesis in Vascular Plants with Above- and Below-Ground Biomass

The growth rate hypothesis (GRH) proposes that higher growth rate (the rate of change in biomass per unit biomass, μ) is associated with higher P concentration and lower C∶P and N∶P ratios. However, the applicability of the GRH to vascular plants is not well-studied and few studies have been done on belowground biomass. Here we showed that, for aboveground, belowground and total biomass of three study species, μ was positively correlated with N∶C under N limitation and positively correlated with P∶C under P limitation. However, the N∶P ratio was a unimodal function of μ, increasing for small values of μ, reaching a maximum, and then decreasing. The range of variations in μ was positively correlated with variation in C∶N∶P stoichiometry. Furthermore, μ and C∶N∶P ranges for aboveground biomass were negatively correlated with those for belowground. Our results confirm the well-known association of growth rate with tissue concentration of the limiting nutrient and provide empirical support for recent theoretical formulations

Professional development programmes for teachers moving from majority to minoritised language medium education:Lessons from a comparative study

Education through the medium of a minoritised language is widely regarded as a critical component of language revitalisation initiatives. Given the demographic and social position of many minoritised languages, however, it may not be easy to find teachers who are fluent and literate in the language, confident about using and teaching it, and prepared for the demands of working in classrooms where the language is the medium of instruction. This article presents findings from a comparative study of teacher education programmes adopted in Catalonia, the Basque Autonomous Community, Wales and New Zealand, to prepare teachers to teach through the media of Catalan, Basque, Welsh and Māori respectively. The research was conducted to inform new professional development initiatives in Scotland, designed to enable qualified teachers to transfer from English-medium to Gaelic-medium education. The findings have wider relevance for other contexts in which the recruitment, professional development and retention of teachers to work in minoritised language medium education represent a challenge