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Slayertplsko View Drop Down
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    Posted: 28-May-2008 at 14:46
It's the same in the western branch - človek Sg. - if you need a plural you use ľudia. (Ludej in russian I think)
Similar to the English person and people.
And yes, it applies to all nouns.


Edited by Slayertplsko - 28-May-2008 at 14:47
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How about years? 1 god, 2-4 goda, 5... let Smile
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Posts: 1061 		  Quote Slayertplsko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-May-2008 at 15:09
Oh I forgot about itBig%20smile
We have this quite regular in Slovak 1 rok 2-4 roky 5 rokov, but Czechs have 1 rok 2-4 roky 5 let/roků.
Well, there might be some exceptions. But even if it's irregular, it is still true that 2-4 is the true (grammatically) plural and 5+ uses the plural genitive. 'let' is GPl of 'leto' (summer) - and this is most probably the semantics. We used to have it in Slovak as well, but it became dated.

These things are however never taught in schools here, because a native speaker obviously knows it. Just like English don't think of phrasal verbs as of something special that needs much attention. I coudn't find these irregularities even in the concise Slovak grammar book. (it is concise though)


Edited by Slayertplsko - 29-May-2008 at 08:15
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Originally posted by gcle2003

I'm not saying that 'hybridisation' is uncommon: I already pointed out that French also is. The Cambridge Encyclopedia lists 100 cases of pidgins/creoles in the modern world. Creolisation is one of the standard methods by which languages develop. However, it happens more in countries and among peoples that are conquered by invaders or largely populated by immigrants, or trade heavily with foreigners and England is one of the countries that has seen that happen many times. Contrariwise, Germany for instance has never been conquered by anyone except (as I said before) temporarily in modern times - and indeed the Allied ocupation did have some effect on German: look at the names of newspapers founded under the occupation.
And I was saying that hybridisation as you defined it is that common that saying "language" or "hybrid language" is same thing for virtually all languages.
Is your (I am not sure we have talk about the same book and same edition, see below) Cambridge Encyclopedia list Standard English or French or German or Russian as pidgins/creoles in the modern world? I don't know what do you mean by "standard method" but on a wide perspective creolisation is somehow accidental and bound to specific historical circumstances, which are not just an invasion like Anglo-Saxon one (see below my excerpts from Cambridge Encyclopedia).
 
Germany was eventually "conquered" at least once more in the history, otherwise you wouldn't have Germanic speakers there. And it is very likely they encountered other people who spoke other language which is now gone and probably interacted with some Germanic languages/dialects in ways we cannot see (not knowing anything about these extinct languages).
But I don't remember using the possessive as an example. 'Bandleader' and 'leader of the band' aren't examples of possessives/genitives. They're assigning attributes. The band doesn't belong to the leader: if anything the leader belongs to the band.
Genitive is not the same with possessive, but includes it.
In "A of (the) B" A belongs to B, I don't understand your last comment, it seems it states the obvious.
I do not understand the series of replies following "this perhaps is unfortunately phrased". There were some largely rhetorical questions following the now admitted misformula "Russian has little that is not Russian".
 
I don't see that specific evidence is necessary (though there is plenty after the 1066 conquest) especially in a preliterate age, when the process being assumed is the process that normally happens in such situations. What evidence we do have about the continuing participation of Celtic languages and Latin lies in place names. If one language had completely dominated the other, as you suggest, then it would have imposed its own place names.
Your last consideration does not stand scrutiny. Place names are among the most conservative names. Toponyms like Danube, Carpathians do not mean anything in the languages of the people currently living there (though on the other hand there are words like "Danubian" or "Carpathian" derived from them). Some of them are archaic IE-an, some toponyms even predate IE languages.
 
But as a reply to the entire paragraph, specific evidence is necessary because pidgins, creoles are not that common and require some specific circumstances (see below for Cambridge Encyclopedia's definitions).
 
You appear to be misunderstanding the term 'pidgin'.
No offense, but you didn't read carefully what I wrote (and maybe I was a bit ambigous about it, choosing an analogy instead of defining the language). I said: "The bad English you find in many of the large non-English speaking metropolises are pidgins more or less. A pidgin is something like "Me Tarzan, you Jane" or perhaps more realistically "You give <point with the finger>. Me like. Me buy.". " (emphasis mine). I did not consider literally "Me Tarzan, you Jane" is a pidgin, I used it for analogy, I continued with what I know pidgins to sound like, primitive trade languages (semantical context, "skeletical" grammar were present in that analogy). And for support I'll use also Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language authored by David Crystal (possible not the same you quoted from):
 
 
I'll write here a large part of the content of the box "Pidgins and creoles". I will not emphasize anything, but hope you will read it fully.
 
"A creole is a pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a community - a definition which emphasizes that pidgins and creoles are two stages in a single process of development.
A pidgin is a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not share a common language, but who want to talk to each other, usually for reasons of trade. Such languages have typically limited vocabulary, a reduced grammatical structure, and a narrow range of functions, compared with the languages from which they derive. They are used only when they need to be, as a 'contact language' in circumstances where communication would not otherwise be possible. They are the native language of no one.
It has often happened that, within a multilingual community, increasing numbers of people begin to use a pidgin as their principal means of communication. This causes a major expansion of the grammar and vocabulary, and of the range of situations in which the language comes to be used. The children of these people come to hear it more regularly, and in due course some of them begin to use it as a mother tongue. When this happens, the language is known as a creole."
 
 
Modern English is a descendant of a pidgin/creole, rather than itself one, I would agree. Middle English is a Norman-French/Old English pidgin, and Old English is an Anglo-Saxon/Latinised Celtic/Danish pidgin.
I'd say that these definitions of pidgins and creoles show that we cannot speak of pidgins and creoles in the history of standard English (well, as I said, perhaps less for the episode of birth of Middle English, see in my previous reply the question of creolization of Middle English). It seems very unlikely that Old English was a pidgin. Just keep in mind the fact it was a very complex language, that the historical circumstances do not seem to show the formation of a pidgin from which Old English to be created as a creole. I hope you're not using the word "pidgin" for any mixture, because it is not correct.
The same can be said about the transition from Middle English to Modern English (in which English further added Romance elements but also words throughout the world) - no pidgins, no creoles. There are English-based pidgins/creoles (I listed some in my previous reply, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia link you also can see a map), but Modern English is not among them.
 
Moreover the mixtures you point out happened on long periods, diachronically, that's why they are not regarded as mixtures, but as evolutions.
 
No. There are several earlier steps. Middle English merges Norman French and Old English, not Old Saxon. Old Saxon merges into Anglo-Saxon, which merges into Old English.
I apologize for inaccuracy, I only suggested to pick the oldest attested ancestor and add languages over it (particularly French as this interaction fueled most of your arguments).
 
I was comparing modern English and modern German in that the first has elements of two different (though still I-E) language groups, whereas modern German still doesn't.
Well it has, only that you don't know or care about them (and actually both languages have much more than elements from two different languages).
 
Being conservative is more sui generis. Continuing to forming sentence structure in the same way is more sui generis. Writing verse in the same way is more sui generis. Continuing to be isolating, agglutinative or synthetic is more sui generis.
These beg the question "why"?
Is really conservative being more sui generis? So, the Germanic languages before the second consonantal shift were more Germanic than after it? Actually were not all languages formed though series of innovations from their ancestors? So, when actually the innovations are considered as a sign of "Germanicity" and when they stop being one? That's why I said it is a slippery slope.
 
You now also say that being synthetic is more sui generis for Germanic languages. But most European languages (Romance included) have synthetic aspects, new words can be used by joining words, or adding prefixes or suffixes. Anticonstitutionnellement is a French word, isn't it? So is électro-encéphalographique.
Also, let's not exaggerate with agglutination. Is really a standard for "Germanicity" to have long phrases bound in single words? I know it is not, and don't forget we have early attested Germanic languages and they are not that agglutinative.
And Germanic languages were not isolated. Not in continental Europe, anyway. Arguably the northern dialects were more isolated (less neighbours, more sea), which would make German with its occasionally impressive agglutination less Germanic than Old Norse.
 
Modern German is solely a Germanic language. Modern English isn't, and I've listed many of the ways in which it isn't. I don't think you've directly confronted any of them.
I've seen nothing to confront, really. All scholars say Modern English is a Germanic language. Have you seen anywhere that Modern English is a Romance-Germanic language? A French-Germanic language? Or anything of the sort?
 
Plus, what you say it may not be really a reference. For instance, you said that being more conservative is being more Germanic. But this can be merely your opinion, not a relevant, scholarly, meaningful criterion. So why would I bother to confront the aspects you list, when it's not clear your concepts and your criteria are valid? I'm not denying English was strongly influenced by French, but I don't see any reason in that which would make English be less Germanic (or stop being a Germanic langauge and become a hybrid, a creole, or whatever it was said here).
 
I never said English was unique in this. I do think that it was born as a pidgin/creole and that in the time it has existed it has seen more invasions and conquests (and settlers) than most countries.
Pidgins are not the result of invasions and conquests, nor languages the result of countries.
 
It's not just a question of 'having trouble'. However, the point is that in the 500 or so years between say 800 and 1300 the language changed drastically enough so that it goes from undecipherable to understandable, and the main reason for that was the fusion of Norman French and Old English. But even the Old English of say 900 is much more understandable than the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf.
That's a leap of 500 years, try leaps of few generations. If Middle English was born as a pidgin/creole, certainly there will be an abruptness somewhere.
 
Well, yes. The English of the 11th century wasn't wildly different from that of the 10th. I'd bet though that the speakers of English in Edward IIIs reign would have had problems with it.
If the language evolution is continuous,
There are periods of fast change, periods of slow change. Conquest and widespread resettlement tend to lead to periods of fast change.
I provided in my previous reply a link. That section actually goes to page 54 and it describes roughly which were the changes.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Edited by Chilbudios - 28-May-2008 at 15:54
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Posts: 6240 		  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-May-2008 at 17:50
Originally posted by gcle2003

How about years? 1 god, 2-4 goda, 5... let Smile
 
 
As you see, the Avestan word for "Year" is "Yare" but Russian "Goda" can be related to Avsetan "Gatha" which means "the last 5 days of the year".
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Possible. But what's your point?
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It doesn't relate to our discussion.

What was the Old Saxon word for Kurgan (barrow/burial mound)? Berg -> Middle Persian Bereg

About barrow: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=berg&searchmode=none "mound," O.E. beorg (W.Saxon), berg (Anglian) "hill," from P.Gmc. *bergaz (cf. O.S., O.Fris., O.H.G. berg "mountain," O.N. bjarg "rock"), from PIE base *bheregh- "high, elevated" (cf. O.C.S. bregu "mountain, height," O.Ir. brigh "mountain," Skt. b'rhant "high," O.Pers. bard- "be high"). Obsolete except in place-names and southwest England dialect by 1400; revived by archaeology. Barrow-wight first recorded 1891.
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True. But what's your point? (berg)
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Originally posted by gcle2003

I'm not saying that 'hybridisation' is uncommon: I already pointed out that French also is. The Cambridge Encyclopedia lists 100 cases of pidgins/creoles in the modern world. Creolisation is one of the standard methods by which languages develop. However, it happens more in countries and among peoples that are conquered by invaders or largely populated by immigrants, or trade heavily with foreigners and England is one of the countries that has seen that happen many times. Contrariwise, Germany for instance has never been conquered by anyone except (as I said before) temporarily in modern times - and indeed the Allied ocupation did have some effect on German: look at the names of newspapers founded under the occupation.
And I was saying that hybridisation as you defined it is that common that saying "language" or "hybrid language" is same thing for virtually all languages.
Most languages may at some point have gone through a hybridisation process. That isn't the point. Some languages went through it long ago, some recently, and with some it is still going on (these are the 'modern' ones I mentioned listed in the Cambridge Encyclopedia, which appears to be mush the same as yours since your quote about pidgins and creoles appears in it on p. 336 of mine (but not in a box)).
 
You could argue that all dogs are hybrids and none are pedigree, on the basis that all breeds started off as crosses. But there's not much point in that: some dogs are accepted as pedigree and some as crosses (hybrid) depending on how many generations have passed (and what the Kennel Club has decided is long enough). We don't have a kennel club for languages, but the same thing applies. If it's a long time since a language creolised (especially if it was prehistorically), then we consider it pure. If the cross is recent, we consider it a hybrid. It's a very subjective view, applied to modern languages.
 
However if you observe a language in the process of transition, even historically, you can recognise that at this stage of its development it was a creole (i.e. incorporated elements from two or more contact languages to facilitate communication between the communities.) Similary, in the first generation of thorougbred horses in the 18th century, one recognises that they were crosses between Arab stallions and native mares. Even though nowadays they are considered pure bred.
Is your (I am not sure we have talk about the same book and same edition, see below) Cambridge Encyclopedia list Standard English or French or German or Russian as pidgins/creoles in the modern world?
Nope. It lists languages in the process of creolisation. I only quoted it to point out how common creolisation/hybridisation actually is, so it wouldn't be in the least surprising to find it in first millenium Britain.
 I don't know what do you mean by "standard method" but on a wide perspective creolisation is somehow accidental and bound to specific historical circumstances, which are not just an invasion like Anglo-Saxon one (see below my excerpts from Cambridge Encyclopedia).
I had previously read the same passage. It seems to apply exactly to the situation in what was to become England.
Germany was eventually "conquered" at least once more in the history, otherwise you wouldn't have Germanic speakers there.
I don't follow the 'once more'. Once more after what?
 
In historic, literate times, Germany (using the term somewhat loosely) hasn't been conquered by anyone to the extent that foreign peoples settled there. Since i live close to Trier I'm well aware that a strip of south-west Germany was in fact part of the Roman Empire, and I also know that eastern parts of modern Germany were invaded and settled by Teutonic peoples. However, in Prussia at least, that was accompanied by the extermination of the previous population. Creolisation requires that the peoples involved on the whole get on with one another most of the time.
 
Scandinavia as far as I know hasn't ever been settled by anyone but Scandinavians.
 
 And it is very likely they encountered other people who spoke other language which is now gone and probably interacted with some Germanic languages/dialects in ways we cannot see (not knowing anything about these extinct languages).
It certainly might have, yes. But not to our knowledge. That sounds a bit like Flaja asking who the Saxons were influenced by before they were Saxons.
But I don't remember using the possessive as an example. 'Bandleader' and 'leader of the band' aren't examples of possessives/genitives. They're assigning attributes. The band doesn't belong to the leader: if anything the leader belongs to the band.
Genitive is not the same with possessive, but includes it.
In "A of (the) B" A belongs to B, I don't understand your last comment, it seems it states the obvious.
Embarrassed I got it exactly the wrong way round. However the important thing is that i was talking in general about the use of phrases rather than concatenation of nouns (which, incidentally, is NOT agglutination.
I do not understand the series of replies following "this perhaps is unfortunately phrased". There were some largely rhetorical questions following the now admitted misformula "Russian has little that is not Russian".
I wish you'd left them in. For the moment it's too much to go back and look.
 
I don't see that specific evidence is necessary (though there is plenty after the 1066 conquest) especially in a preliterate age, when the process being assumed is the process that normally happens in such situations. What evidence we do have about the continuing participation of Celtic languages and Latin lies in place names. If one language had completely dominated the other, as you suggest, then it would have imposed its own place names.
Your last consideration does not stand scrutiny. Place names are among the most conservative names. Toponyms like Danube, Carpathians do not mean anything in the languages of the people currently living there (though on the other hand there are words like "Danubian" or "Carpathian" derived from them). Some of them are archaic IE-an, some toponyms even predate IE languages.
So? Doesn't that lend substance to your belief that all languages are hybrids?
 
Mostly, at the period involved, all we have is place names. We don't have much record of how people actually talked. But it isn't just the place names: place-describing words also tend to carry over. 'Combe' for instance even in modern English still retains its Celtic meaning of 'valley'.
 But as a reply to the entire paragraph, specific evidence is necessary because pidgins, creoles are not that common and require some specific circumstances (see below for Cambridge Encyclopedia's definitions).
I read the same source as indicating that they are very common. They arise wherever cultures with different languages are forced into close proximity and the need to deal with one another on a day-to-day basis. Which is precisely what the situation was in England post the Germanic invasions and again post the Norman conquest.
 
You appear to be misunderstanding the term 'pidgin'.
No offense, but you didn't read carefully what I wrote (and maybe I was a bit ambigous about it, choosing an analogy instead of defining the language). I said: "The bad English you find in many of the large non-English speaking metropolises are pidgins more or less. A pidgin is something like "Me Tarzan, you Jane" or perhaps more realistically "You give <point with the finger>. Me like. Me buy.". " (emphasis mine). I did not consider literally "Me Tarzan, you Jane" is a pidgin, I used it for analogy, I continued with what I know pidgins to sound like, primitive trade languages (semantical context, "skeletical" grammar were present in that analogy). And for support I'll use also Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language authored by David Crystal (possible not the same you quoted from):
 
 
I'll write here a large part of the content of the box "Pidgins and creoles". I will not emphasize anything, but hope you will read it fully.
 
"A creole is a pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a community - a definition which emphasizes that pidgins and creoles are two stages in a single process of development.
Down to there I have the same text on page 336. However it then differs. Mine says
First, within a community, increasing numbers of people begin to use pidgin as their principal means of communication. As a consequence, their children  hear it more than any other language, and gradually it takes on the status of a mother tongue for them. Within a generation or two, native language use becomes consolidated and widespread. The result is a 'creole' or a 'creolised' language.
- Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, first edition 1987, third printing 1988.
The passage then goes on to point the importance to its speakers of the language in emphasising their ethnic identity: again a process that applied as the 'English' began to think of themselves as, well, English.
A pidgin is a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not share a common language, but who want to talk to each other, usually for reasons of trade. Such languages have typically limited vocabulary, a reduced grammatical structure, and a narrow range of functions, compared with the languages from which they derive. They are used only when they need to be, as a 'contact language' in circumstances where communication would not otherwise be possible. They are the native language of no one.
It has often happened that, within a multilingual community, increasing numbers of people begin to use a pidgin as their principal means of communication. This causes a major expansion of the grammar and vocabulary, and of the range of situations in which the language comes to be used. The children of these people come to hear it more regularly, and in due course some of them begin to use it as a mother tongue. When this happens, the language is known as a creole."
 
 
Modern English is a descendant of a pidgin/creole, rather than itself one, I would agree. Middle English is a Norman-French/Old English pidgin, and Old English is an Anglo-Saxon/Latinised Celtic/Danish pidgin.
I'd say that these definitions of pidgins and creoles show that we cannot speak of pidgins and creoles in the history of standard English (well, as I said, perhaps less for the episode of birth of Middle English, see in my previous reply the question of creolization of Middle English). It seems very unlikely that Old English was a pidgin. Just keep in mind the fact it was a very complex language, that the historical circumstances do not seem to show the formation of a pidgin from which Old English to be created as a creole. I hope you're not using the word "pidgin" for any mixture, because it is not correct.
I have sometimes used the word 'pidgin' for 'creole' as I've already said. Otherwise I'm sticking to the way the terms are used by Crystal. A creole does not have to be simple.
The same can be said about the transition from Middle English to Modern English (in which English further added Romance elements but also words throughout the world) - no pidgins, no creoles. There are English-based pidgins/creoles (I listed some in my previous reply, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia link you also can see a map), but Modern English is not among them.
 
Moreover the mixtures you point out happened on long periods, diachronically, that's why they are not regarded as mixtures, but as evolutions.
How long is a long period? I doubt that it took more than 3-4 generations for Old English to develop (but not to standardise, if it ever did) and Middle English was well in bloom 200 years after the Conquest.
 
No. There are several earlier steps. Middle English merges Norman French and Old English, not Old Saxon. Old Saxon merges into Anglo-Saxon, which merges into Old English.
I apologize for inaccuracy, I only suggested to pick the oldest attested ancestor and add languages over it (particularly French as this interaction fueled most of your arguments).
 
I was comparing modern English and modern German in that the first has elements of two different (though still I-E) language groups, whereas modern German still doesn't.
Well it has, only that you don't know or care about them (and actually both languages have much more than elements from two different languages).
It wuld be interesting to know which other language groups you're referring to. I said that some east German dialects had, I believe, some Slavonic elements.  I don't think Yiddish exemplifies Hebrew influence on German, but apart from the Jews and the Slavs, what non-Germanic peoples have lived closely enough with the Germans to have significantly influenced the language?
 
Being conservative is more sui generis. Continuing to forming sentence structure in the same way is more sui generis. Writing verse in the same way is more sui generis. Continuing to be isolating, agglutinative or synthetic is more sui generis.
These beg the question "why"?
It doesn't beg the question. It doesn't even consider it.
Is really conservative being more sui generis?
Yes, that's pretty much what the word means. Carrying on as you were before.
So, the Germanic languages before the second consonantal shift were more Germanic than after it?
They were closer to proto-Germanic. They were less sui generis after the shift.
Actually were not all languages formed though series of innovations from their ancestors?
 
I would have thought so, yes. However, sometimes the 'innovation' is a merger of two or more parents. As in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal....
So, when actually the innovations are considered as a sign of "Germanicity" and when they stop being one? That's why I said it is a slippery slope.
'Germanicity' is not a binary, yes/no choice. There are degrees of 'Germanicity'. Modern German is more Germanic than modern English. It's arguably less Germanic than Old High German.
 
You now also say that being synthetic is more sui generis for Germanic languages. But most European languages (Romance included) have synthetic aspects, new words can be used by joining words, or adding prefixes or suffixes. Anticonstitutionnellement is a French word, isn't it? So is électro-encéphalographique.
'Anticonstitutionellement' is NOT a string of nouns bolted together. Neither is électro-encéphalographique' (if it exists - 'électroencéphalographie' does).
Also, let's not exaggerate with agglutination. Is really a standard for "Germanicity" to have long phrases bound in single words? I know it is not, and don't forget we have early attested Germanic languages and they are not that agglutinative.
This has nothing to do with agglutination. Finnish is an agglutinative language. Some Amerindian languages are agglutinative and Japanese and Swahili are. Agglutination is an alternative to simple declension systems with separate parts of speech like the I-E languages typically have.
And Germanic languages were not isolated. Not in continental Europe, anyway. Arguably the northern dialects were more isolated (less neighbours, more sea), which would make German with its occasionally impressive agglutination less Germanic than Old Norse.
 
Modern German is solely a Germanic language. Modern English isn't, and I've listed many of the ways in which it isn't. I don't think you've directly confronted any of them.
I've seen nothing to confront, really. All scholars say Modern English is a Germanic language. Have you seen anywhere that Modern English is a Romance-Germanic language? A French-Germanic language? Or anything of the sort?
Yes. It's standard teaching wherever I was taught, from school onwards. In fact I'm surprised anyone thought it worth debating.
 
For that matter, French is typically easier for the English to learn than German is, because in other than the simplest expressions French is more like English. It's easier for instance to learn to say 'vous' for 'you' always than to say 'sie' for you and have to use the same word to mean they and she and her.
 
A key here is the phrasal verb, which is difficult to learn in any language. French doesn't have them. English and German both do but they handle them differently, and the differences are difficult to pick up and remember. It's even confusing that 'Es fällt zusammen' which appears to mean 'it falls together' actually translates as 'it falls apart'.
 
 
Plus, what you say it may not be really a reference. For instance, you said that being more conservative is being more Germanic. 
If you're Germanic to start with, yes. Being more conservative means being keener on keeping things the way they are.
 But this can be merely your opinion, not a relevant, scholarly, meaningful criterion.
I don't think so. It's what 'conservative' means. Staying the same.
So why would I bother to confront the aspects you list, when it's not clear your concepts and your criteria are valid? I'm not denying English was strongly influenced by French, but I don't see any reason in that which would make English be less Germanic (or stop being a Germanic langauge and become a hybrid, a creole, or whatever it was said here).
 
I never said English was unique in this. I do think that it was born as a pidgin/creole and that in the time it has existed it has seen more invasions and conquests (and settlers) than most countries.
Pidgins are not the result of invasions and conquests, nor languages the result of countries.
People speak languages. People who settle among other people have to talk to them. Conquest is just one of the ways people come to settle. Since they have to talk to one another, they have to find a mutual language. Mostly that ends up as a blend of the two, just as mostly the population ends up as a blend of the two.
 
Languages in countries that have seen more waves of incoming settlers are therefore more likely to have blended languages.
 
It's not just a question of 'having trouble'. However, the point is that in the 500 or so years between say 800 and 1300 the language changed drastically enough so that it goes from undecipherable to understandable, and the main reason for that was the fusion of Norman French and Old English. But even the Old English of say 900 is much more understandable than the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf.
That's a leap of 500 years,
"This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving European manuscript dating to the early 11th century"
- wikipedia on Beowulf.
 
Compare if you like Beowulf and the A-S Chronicles.
 
 try leaps of few generations. If Middle English was born as a pidgin/creole, certainly there will be an abruptness somewhere.
 
Well, yes. The English of the 11th century wasn't wildly different from that of the 10th. I'd bet though that the speakers of English in Edward IIIs reign would have had problems with it.
If the language evolution is continuous,
There are periods of fast change, periods of slow change. Conquest and widespread resettlement tend to lead to periods of fast change.
I provided in my previous reply a link. That section actually goes to page 54 and it describes roughly which were the changes.
 
 


Edited by gcle2003 - 28-May-2008 at 21:15
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I will answer in more detail tomorrow but meanwhile reading your reply I am not sure you actually have read the material I linked you earlier on the question of Middle English as creole. Just in case, I copied pages 46-54 and uploaded them here (maybe it's easier to read them in a local copy or eventually printed):
 
 
 
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

I will answer in more detail tomorrow but meanwhile reading your reply I am not sure you actually have read the material I linked you earlier on the question of Middle English as creole. Just in case, I copied pages 46-54 and uploaded them here (maybe it's easier to read them in a local copy or eventually printed):
 
 
 
Yes, it's gettng time-consuming Smile
 
However, with regard to Anne Curzan's paper, she presents the argument for Middle English being justifably called a creole well enough. (In case it puzzles people, these are images.)
 
A:
 
B:
C:
 
However, she then goes on to dismiss the idea that it represents a creole without it seems to me any good reason for doing so. In fact it seems to me that what shows through is an emotional reaction that describing it as a creole somehow diminishes it, which is of course untrue.
 
She does not concern herself with the development of Old English from Anglo-Saxon (except for correctly pointing out that we have very little evidence if anything for dialectal differences, and English in any period is not a single unitary language).
 
It seems to me significant however that one of the arguments she makes[1] for denying that Middle English is a Norman French/Old English creole is that the loss of gender distinction in English may have been due to contact with Old Norse via the Vikings rather than with French via the Normans.
 
Maybe.
 
However, that only shifts the creolisation in time and makes Old Norse one of the components of the Old English mixture that emerged before the Conquest. And it misses the point that, no matter the contact languages involved, loss of gender distinction is typically one of the simplifications that occur in pidgins, let alone creoles.
 
[1] In fact this is her major point, sice it's the subject of the paper.
 
 
 
 
 
 
xxxx


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Well, Anne Curzan's paper is actually a book published by Cambridge University Press.

I don't see how can you find those paragraphs as a justitication for a creole language. Read again the definition of creole given by David Crystal (who also does not claim English - Old English, Middle English or modern Standard English - is a creole). Anne Curzan also gives several definitions for creole languages at page 49 ("none of the Middle English creole theories adheres to traditional definition of creole. A creole is typically described as an elaborated pidgin [...] No theory has seriously proposed that Middle English has its roots in a pidgin. " and continues further with less rigid definitions - unlike David Crystal's - where creolization is not necessarily the continuation of a pidgin but certain types of synchronic mixtures).
 
She's not merely emotionally dismissing the Middle English creole theories, she invokes many arguments and strong bibliographic support. For Middle English failing to show creolization features see footnote 5, at pages 49-50 (the image you labeled as C seems thus misleading without presenting the other side of the coin), that if was any creolization not the French conquest triggered it see also footnote 6 at page 50 and further discussion about Old Norse contacts which "do not require the positing of a creole" (p. 53). At page 51 Clairborne's account on the abandoning the grammar gender is taken as humorously aimed and counter-argued that the phenomenon of losing gender is identifiable in Late Old English and it was a gradual, continuous process. The conclusions are very clear at pages 53-54, I quote a few: "Perhaps the most important argument against Middle English creole theories is that there is not evidence of any discontinuity in the transmission of the language. Linguistic changes in Late Old English and Early Middle English may have been rapid and dramatic in nature and scope, but it does not appear to have been disruptive." and "In the case of Middle English the "creole-like" features of inflectional reduction and loss of grammatical gender seem to have been incipient in the language and accelerated by language contact."
 
Also she claims throughout this section that the pejorative conotations (of creolization, of bastardization) should not impede the scholars to address such questions, which seems  the opposite of what you suggest. She does not refute the theory emotionally, she addresses the arguments and acknowledges a very complex history of English language (or should we say languages as the author suggests), but without being the history of a creole language.
 
As I have said earlier in the thread, this is the only chapter of English history where it was suggested it was about a creole. I don't know of any theories suggesting Old English started as a creole. Any suggestion that a language is a creole must bring evidence that the respective language follows the definition.
 
I will address your previous reply a bit later, as I am searching for some bibliography right now.


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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Well, Anne Curzan's paper is actually a book published by Cambridge University Press.

 
Sorry about that. I didn't know from the scans. They look like from a book, but I thought it was an article-in-a-book.
I don't see how can you find those paragraphs as a justitication for a creole language. Read again the definition of creole given by David Crystal (who also does not claim English - Old English, Middle English or modern Standard English - is a creole).
He doesn't dispute it either.
 
A couple of references of my own. A quick one from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic#Characteristics
 
and a couple of heavier weight ones:
 
and
 
I note neither paper actually uses the word 'creole' but I fail to see that anything in them fails to meet the definition of creole. Certainly the case presented is that Old English was a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic following common mechanisms that are met with in creole situations. (Dominant culture having the most effect on vocabulary, subordinate culture having more effect on phonological and morpheme-syntactic transfer.)
 
I'd also note that theories of single-line development of English at the time is associated with an assumption of 'ethnic cleansing' under which the Britons were driven out to Wales and Cornwall and eliminated from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Quite apart from linguistic considerations, that belief has been shattered by DNA analysis, showing the the populations interbred extensively.
 
 Anne Curzan also gives several definitions for creole languages at page 49 ("none of the Middle English creole theories adheres to traditional definition of creole. A creole is typically described as an elaborated pidgin [...] No theory has seriously proposed that Middle English has its roots in a pidgin. " and continues further with less rigid definitions - unlike David Crystal's - where creolization is not necessarily the continuation of a pidgin but certain types of synchronic mixtures).
The first stage in any inter-cultural encounter is obviously going to be a pidgin, whatever happens later. You don't seriously think that the Britons immediately adopted Anglo-Saxon as their mother tongue, do you? Take a class of French children who haven't studied English and a class of English children who haven't studied French, mix them together (boys and girls) and you can bet a pidgin will develop quickly enough.
 
The same thing happens when armies meet.
She's not merely emotionally dismissing the Middle English creole theories, she invokes many arguments and strong bibliographic support. For Middle English failing to show creolization features see footnote 5, at pages 49-50 (the image you labeled as C seems thus misleading without presenting the other side of the coin), that if was any creolization not the French conquest triggered it see also footnote 6 at page 50 and further discussion about Old Norse contacts which "do not require the positing of a creole" (p. 53). At page 51 Clairborne's account on the abandoning the grammar gender is taken as humorously aimed and counter-argued that the phenomenon of losing gender is identifiable in Late Old English and it was a gradual, continuous process.
Creolisation is a gradual, continuous process. I pointed out that the loss of gender in late Old English merely shifts the phenomenon back a few centuries.
 The conclusions are very clear at pages 53-54, I quote a few: "Perhaps the most important argument against Middle English creole theories is that there is not evidence of any discontinuity in the transmission of the language.
That's the sort of thing I mean. Why should there be a discontinuity? Where's the discontinuity in the development of the original 'creole' in Louisiana?
 
Whatever her disclaimers, she seems to me simply to be inventing characteristics that a creole is supposed to have, in order to dismiss the use of the term, which, frankly, I think she mistakenly sees as derogatory, in that 'creoles' are seen as something a little childish or elementary, whereas they are in fact full-fledged, complex languages.
 Linguistic changes in Late Old English and Early Middle English may have been rapid and dramatic in nature and scope, but it does not appear to have been disruptive." and "In the case of Middle English the "creole-like" features of inflectional reduction and loss of grammatical gender seem to have been incipient in the language and accelerated by language contact."
As I said, that inflectional reduction and loss of gender had already happened before 1066 merely indicates that creolisation occurred earlier, which is my point.
 Also she claims throughout this section that the pejorative conotations (of creolization, of bastardization) should not impede the scholars to address such questions, which seems  the opposite of what you suggest. She does not refute the theory emotionally, she addresses the arguments and acknowledges a very complex history of English language (or should we say languages as the author suggests), but without being the history of a creole language.
 
As I have said earlier in the thread, this is the only chapter of English history where it was suggested it was about a creole. I don't know of any theories suggesting Old English started as a creole. Any suggestion that a language is a creole must bring evidence that the respective language follows the definition.
That depends a bit on establishing an acceptable definition of a creole. As for the 'mixing' (for want of a word) of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic, see the papers I have linked to.
 
I will address your previous reply a bit later, as I am searching for some bibliography right now.
OK


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This author was quoted in the previous book, that's why I picked him. You have a more detailed demonstration for why Middle English is not a creole. Some of his arguments are similar with mine against your concept of hybridisation.
 
"Unless simplification and language mixture are thought to be sufficient criteria for the definition of a creole or creoloid (and I do not think they are, since this would make most languages in the world creoles, and the term would consqeuently lose its distinctiveness) then Middle English does not appear to be a creole" (p. 335)
 
"This is not to deny that English changed more than, say, German, in the course of its linguistic history and that these changes have to do with the frequency of language contact. But this alone is not enough; to call every mixed language a 'creole' would make the term useless. Yiddish, Albanian, French and Middle English (and many others) are composed of elements from various sources - but they are not creole languages" (p. 342)
 
Oh, and since this whole discussion started about the comparision between English and German (or the position of the former inside the Germanic languages family) then you should know that:
"Most Romance languages, Yiddish, Middle English, Bulgarian, or even Germanic languages as a group within the Indo-European family of languages, have all been compared with, or even claimed to be, creole languages." (p. 329-330, emphasis mine) Smile
 
 


Edited by Chilbudios - 29-May-2008 at 16:33
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Originally posted by Gcle2003

He doesn't dispute it either.
He also does not say Middle English actually was brought by Martians in UFOs. Wink
 He writes a history of the English language(s), and he presents creole languages too and Old English and Middle English are not presented as such. Nor their formation does not match his definition.
 
A couple of references of my own. A quick one from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic#Characteristics
 
and a couple of heavier weight ones:
 
and
 
I note neither paper actually uses the word 'creole' but I fail to see that anything in them fails to meet the definition of creole. Certainly the case presented is that Old English was a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic following common mechanisms that are met with in creole situations. (Dominant culture having the most effect on vocabulary, subordinate culture having more effect on phonological and morpheme-syntactic transfer.)
 
I'd also note that theories of single-line development of English at the time is associated with an assumption of 'ethnic cleansing' under which the Britons were driven out to Wales and Cornwall and eliminated from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Quite apart from linguistic considerations, that belief has been shattered by DNA analysis, showing the the populations interbred extensively.
Creole is not just mixture. Ethnic mixture does not necessarily produce creoles.
Your articles look intersting (I just glanced, will read them after I throw this short reply), but what does it prove? No one (not me, none of the authors we quoted from) denies mixture in English. We just say it's a normal process, a quasi-universal process, in the history of English sometimes the rhythm was more alert, but it's not creolization (hybridization, call it however you want).
 
The first stage in any inter-cultural encounter is obviously going to be a pidgin, whatever happens later. You don't seriously think that the Britons immediately adopted Anglo-Saxon as their mother tongue, do you? Take a class of French children who haven't studied English and a class of English children who haven't studied French, mix them together (boys and girls) and you can bet a pidgin will develop quickly enough.
 
The same thing happens when armies meet.
Pidgins can form but they won't last, they won't last probably enough to attest them as pidgins, even less to form a creole.
Many contact areas (as you can see even in today Europe) are not dominated by pidgins (as you predict), but by bilngualism. Bilingualism is the common process through which the languages spread, through which the languages influence each other, not formation of pidgins.
 
Creolisation is a gradual, continuous process. I pointed out that the loss of gender in late Old English merely shifts the phenomenon back a few centuries.
No, it is not. David Crystal says it clearly in its definition (a creole forms from a pidgin which is not the native language of any of its speakers!! the discontinuity is obvious) and Anne Curzan says it when it arguments against Middle English as a creole.
 
That's the sort of thing I mean. Why should there be a discontinuity? Where's the discontinuity in the development of the original 'creole' in Louisiana?
 
Whatever her disclaimers, she seems to me simply to be inventing characteristics that a creole is supposed to have, in order to dismiss the use of the term, which, frankly, I think she mistakenly sees as derogatory, in that 'creoles' are seen as something a little childish or elementary, whereas they are in fact full-fledged, complex languages.
She basically uses the same definitions (or even less rigid) as David Crystal and all the other authors. What definition would you expect her to use? Have you found any definition (conceptualization) worth considering but these authors ignore?
And where did you read that she believes "creoles are [...] a little childish or elementary" in those pages?
 
As I said, that inflectional reduction and loss of gender had already happened before 1066 merely indicates that creolisation occurred earlier, which is my point.
But if the so-called creolisation happened before the linguistic contacts which allegedly caused it, what creolisation are we talking about? If the loss of gender is not only caused by external factors but also by internal ones, is it evidence for creolisation or is it linguistic evolution and change? She did not argue about pre-post 1066 but about gender loss being "incipient in the language and accelerated by language contact".
 
That depends a bit on establishing an acceptable definition of a creole. As for the 'mixing' (for want of a word) of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic, see the papers I have linked to.
I'll repeat it, no one denies that languages mix. What these scholars (and me) are saying is that not every mixture is a creolisation, a hybridisation, because otherwise we'd end up in calling almost all languages like that, and what would these concept then mean? Essentially nothing. Therefore it's a self-defeating position to call every mixture a creole.
 
 
 
 


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I don't have any problem with what follows here. It seems to be merely rhetorical, claiming that every language can be claimed to be a creole.
 
That's like saying every dog can claim to be a cross, so therefore the concept of cross breeds is invalid.
 
Essentially, just as after a certain time cross breeds of dog (or any animal) end up being classified as pure breeds, after a certain time (much longer than with dogs) creoles are no longer classified as creoles, but as unique languages.
 
When Byerly Turk was put to its first English mare, the colt that resulted was a cross. A hybrid. In language terms a creole. Three hundred years later thoroughbred horses are not viewed as crosses or hybrids but as purebred. Essentiall the same is true of languages (and indeed human races).
 
Which of course is not to say that some races and breeds and languages originate through splitting and separation. It simply says that what is not seen as a creole today may well have been one originally.
 
Saying 'any language is a creole' and meaning 'any language may have been a creole in the past' is therefore not a reason to drop the term. It merely indicates that the language evolved as the result of the mingling of more than one people each with its own prior language.
 
Originally posted by Chilbudios

 
 
 
This author was quoted in the previous book, that's why I picked him. You have a more detailed demonstration for why Middle English is not a creole. Some of his arguments are similar with mine against your concept of hybridisation.
 
"Unless simplification and language mixture are thought to be sufficient criteria for the definition of a creole or creoloid (and I do not think they are, since this would make most languages in the world creoles, and the term would consqeuently lose its distinctiveness) then Middle English does not appear to be a creole" (p. 335)
 
"This is not to deny that English changed more than, say, German, in the course of its linguistic history and that these changes have to do with the frequency of language contact. But this alone is not enough; to call every mixed language a 'creole' would make the term useless. Yiddish, Albanian, French and Middle English (and many others) are composed of elements from various sources - but they are not creole languages" (p. 342)
 
Oh, and since this whole discussion started about the comparision between English and German (or the position of the former inside the Germanic languages family) then you should know that:
"Most Romance languages, Yiddish, Middle English, Bulgarian, or even Germanic languages as a group within the Indo-European family of languages, have all been compared with, or even claimed to be, creole languages." (p. 329-330, emphasis mine) Smile
 
 
 
What's wrong with that? Most Romance languages are creoles in origin, resulting from the contact between Latins, Celts, and various Germanic tribes. (Slavic in the case of Rumanian.)
 
Yiddish certainly is a creole. So is Ladino. Bulgarian I don't know, but isn't it supposed to be a fusion of Turkic and Slav features, like Bulgarians themselves? Like I said, I don't know but that's what I've heard.
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Originally posted by gcle2003

I don't have any problem with what follows here. It seems to be merely rhetorical, claiming that every language can be claimed to be a creole.
 
That's like saying every dog can claim to be a cross, so therefore the concept of cross breeds is invalid.
 
Essentially, just as after a certain time cross breeds of dog (or any animal) end up being classified as pure breeds, after a certain time (much longer than with dogs) creoles are no longer classified as creoles, but as unique languages.
 
When Byerly Turk was put to its first English mare, the colt that resulted was a cross. A hybrid. In language terms a creole. Three hundred years later thoroughbred horses are not viewed as crosses or hybrids but as purebred. Essentiall the same is true of languages (and indeed human races).
 
Which of course is not to say that some races and breeds and languages originate through splitting and separation. It simply says that what is not seen as a creole today may well have been one originally.
 
Saying 'any language is a creole' and meaning 'any language may have been a creole in the past' is therefore not a reason to drop the term. It merely indicates that the language evolved as the result of the mingling of more than one people each with its own prior language.
This is a straw man, no offense.
 If you consider it rhetoric it doesn't mean it actually is. The reason why the term is dropped is because it does not create distinctiveness which is one of the essential conditions of having formal definitions. You fail to argue against that, so I don't see what you argue against.
 
Moreover, all the scholars invoked so far (including your source) said that what a creole really is. "Saying 'any language is a creole' [...] merely indicates that the language evolved as the result of the mingling of more than one people each with its own prior language" it only suggests that you still do not know what a creole is or you don't agree with any definition given so far. Which is your right, but it doesn't mean you actually have a point and anyway you should say it clearly you disagree with all the definitions provided so far (also that from Cambridge Encyclopedia of English language which was initially your source) and provide one of your own and of course justification for it. You can invent any terms to suit your position, but similarly you could call languages "tripods" (because, let's say, there are three persons in pronouns - 1st, 2nd and 3rd and you metaphorically want to consider the "legs" of the verbs), "washing mashines", "dynamites", "leprechauns" or anything else. Actually replacing in your discourse "creole" with any of these it won't change anything, because it's an ad-hoc definition invented to support a position, it is nothing methodologically, nothing meaningful, nothing worth considering, nothing scholarly. You provided so far no justification and no reference to argue that creolisation is simply mixture, fusion, mingling or whatever else you described it.
 
The biological analogy it does not any hold any water. First, languages are not living beings (thus justification is begged). Second, languages differ not only from region to region, but from speaker from speaker, even in different moments of life of a speaker (which learns the language better or on the contrary forgets it). If by an analogy it would be suggested that langauge is a living organism, then this should be what we express (or better said what we could potentially express) in every moment with our mind and our articulating capacities (otherwise the analogy would be transformed into one of cancerous breeds having their DNA mutating continuously during their life Wink). One of the materials presented by us in this thread (I will look it later if you missed it, now I'm in hurry) reasonably questioned the "Standard English" reference as virtually no speakers actually speak it, we all speak mutated forms of English. This is valid for any language and any speaker. Third, as much as the analogy goes it supports my position, not yours. English is classified as a Germanic language, it has the pedigree of a Germanic language. If it would be a cross-breed as you claim, it would have been a Germanic-Romance langauge. Find me the association granting the latter pedigree (i.e. the scholarship attesting this taxonomical position for English) and you may have a point. Otherwise it's just dodging the question - bring scholars to argue for the creoleness of Old English, Middle English (on that you can find some in the bibliography of the materials I linked) and Standard English. Find evidence that the increasing mixture of English with other language (which continued long after the birth of Middle English) is creolisation or as you called it earlier hybridisation.
 
What's wrong with that? Most Romance languages are creoles in origin, resulting from the contact between Latins, Celts, and various Germanic tribes. (Slavic in the case of Rumanian.)
 
Yiddish certainly is a creole. So is Ladino. Bulgarian I don't know, but isn't it supposed to be a fusion of Turkic and Slav features, like Bulgarians themselves? Like I said, I don't know but that's what I've heard.
All your claims are false according to the scholarly definitions exposed on the thread so far.
 
You also avoided to comment about the entire Germanic branch being a creole one. Of course, it would annihilate entirely your point. In the bibliography I'm preparing I'll show the potential contact between proto-Germanic branch and the other IE and non-IE languages.  Then you either will be forced to admit all the Germanic languages are creoles or to drop this concept.
 
 


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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Originally posted by Gcle2003

He doesn't dispute it either.
He also does not say Middle English actually was brought by Martians in UFOs. Wink
 He writes a history of the English language(s), and he presents creole languages too and Old English and Middle English are not presented as such. Nor their formation does not match his definition.
He never considers historical creoles at all. Does that mean they never existed? Or that such languages were brought by Martians in UFOs? Are you really denying that creole languages existed in the past, simply because a modern author writing about modern creoles doesn't mention them?
 
Give me an example of a historic creole that no longer exists.
 
 
A couple of references of my own. A quick one from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic#Characteristics
 
and a couple of heavier weight ones:
 
and
 
I note neither paper actually uses the word 'creole' but I fail to see that anything in them fails to meet the definition of creole. Certainly the case presented is that Old English was a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic following common mechanisms that are met with in creole situations. (Dominant culture having the most effect on vocabulary, subordinate culture having more effect on phonological and morpheme-syntactic transfer.)
 
I'd also note that theories of single-line development of English at the time is associated with an assumption of 'ethnic cleansing' under which the Britons were driven out to Wales and Cornwall and eliminated from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Quite apart from linguistic considerations, that belief has been shattered by DNA analysis, showing the the populations interbred extensively.
Creole is not just mixture. Ethnic mixture does not necessarily produce creoles.
Your articles look intersting (I just glanced, will read them after I throw this short reply), but what does it prove? No one (not me, none of the authors we quoted from) denies mixture in English. We just say it's a normal process, a quasi-universal process, in the history of English sometimes the rhythm was more alert, but it's not creolization (hybridization, call it however you want).
Then what do you call it? A politically dominant culture meets a subordinate one: the two get along together and interbreed: they each contribute different elements to the common language they end up speaking.
 
What are you going to call that language?
 
The important point here is that the language we call English developed (a) originally from the mingling of the Britons with the invading Anglo-Saxons, etc, together with the slightly later Danes in the east of 'England' (quotes because it includes considerable parts of present-day Scotland) and (b) subsequent to the Norman Conquest by the mingling of pre-1066 English with Norman French (and French French maybe under the Angevins).
 
As a result it today mixes its predominantly Germanic structure with French and to a lesser extent British Celtic, making it a 'crossover language' between the Germanic group and the Romance group, more than any other contemporary language.
 
That history of successive mergers (which I call creolisations and see no need not to) means that, overtly anyway it has very simple grammar and a very tolerant syntax, which leads it to be seen as an easy language to learn even though this is somewhat misleading since it overlooks (a) in writing the confusing spelling conventions and (b) in speech the considerable importance of intonation, more than any other European language except maybe Norwegian.
 
But if you just want to be understood in English, and not pass as a native Geordie or Scouse or even standard English speaker, then, yes, it offers fewer pitfalls and traps. Because it is essentially a mixture of linguistic influences from the Celts and the Norman French and the mainstream Germanic tribes.
 
It's a mixture just like the people who speak it are a mixture, and have been for some 2,000 years, starting with the Roman occupation. 
 
The first stage in any inter-cultural encounter is obviously going to be a pidgin, whatever happens later. You don't seriously think that the Britons immediately adopted Anglo-Saxon as their mother tongue, do you? Take a class of French children who haven't studied English and a class of English children who haven't studied French, mix them together (boys and girls) and you can bet a pidgin will develop quickly enough.
 
The same thing happens when armies meet.
Pidgins can form but they won't last, they won't last probably enough to attest them as pidgins, even less to form a creole.
Many contact areas (as you can see even in today Europe) are not dominated by pidgins (as you predict), but by bilngualism. Bilingualism is the common process through which the languages spread, through which the languages influence each other, not formation of pidgins.
Bilingualism is what we have here in Luxembourg, though here it isn't actually true bilingualism because the two languages German and French are superimposed on the basic mother-togue Lëtzebuergesch.  They just learn them all as small children, that's all.
 
In fact pidgin is talked and written at the European Union, partly because of the need for so many translators that they have to use non-English ones to translate into English. So for instance there is now an 'English' in which it is permissible to say 'I have been here since five years' since a similar construct exists in most European languages EXCEPT English. And 'eventually' is now used to mean 'possibly', as it does in French and German and elsewhere, instead of to mean 'in the end' as it does in English. And there is 'hopefully' used to mean 'it is to be hoped' rather than 'full of hope'. And 'possibility' used to mean French 'possibilité' instead of using the correct 'opportunity'. And so on.
 
I've no doubt at all that there will eventually (hah!) be a Europe-wide English creole, and that we are already seeing its birth.
 
Creolisation is a gradual, continuous process. I pointed out that the loss of gender in late Old English merely shifts the phenomenon back a few centuries.
No, it is not. David Crystal says it clearly in its definition (a creole forms from a pidgin which is not the native language of any of its speakers!! the discontinuity is obvious) and Anne Curzan says it when it arguments against Middle English as a creole.
Of course a pidgin is not the native language of any of its speakers. It's a mixture of elements from both (or more) of their native languages. Take the Nigerian creole expression 'Afraid catch me' meaning I am/was frightened'. It's not Ibo at all in vocabulary, and it's not English in expression. But it's obviously a mixture of English vocabulary and Ibo sentence structure and idiom. For one that encompasses both English and Nigerian vocabulary, try 'make yeye' for cracking jokes.
 
Pidgins become creoles when the speakers of the language start to feel it as their native language, rather than as an alternative to it. What Crystal meant was only that a pidgin is not solely the simplified native language of one group, which is how it is sometimes presented, as in 'Me Tarzan, you Jane'.
That's the sort of thing I mean. Why should there be a discontinuity? Where's the discontinuity in the development of the original 'creole' in Louisiana?
 
Whatever her disclaimers, she seems to me simply to be inventing characteristics that a creole is supposed to have, in order to dismiss the use of the term, which, frankly, I think she mistakenly sees as derogatory, in that 'creoles' are seen as something a little childish or elementary, whereas they are in fact full-fledged, complex languages.
She basically uses the same definitions (or even less rigid) as David Crystal and all the other authors. What definition would you expect her to use? Have you found any definition (conceptualization) worth considering but these authors ignore?
And where did you read that she believes "creoles are [...] a little childish or elementary" in those pages?
It's implicit in her tone.
As I said, that inflectional reduction and loss of gender had already happened before 1066 merely indicates that creolisation occurred earlier, which is my point.
But if the so-called creolisation happened before the linguistic contacts which allegedly caused it, what creolisation are we talking about?
You miss the point.
 
She points out (or claims: it's not a claim I want to dispute particularly) that the loss of gender may have occurred because of contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes before 1066. That just means that that particular creolisation occurred before 1066.
 
Incidentally, if we're talking about gender loss, Brython only had two genders, and indeed it had no declensions, nouns being the same in all cases. Sound somewhat 'English'?
 If the loss of gender is not only caused by external factors but also by internal ones, is it evidence for creolisation or is it linguistic evolution and change? She did not argue about pre-post 1066 but about gender loss being "incipient in the language and accelerated by language contact".
Why would it be 'incipient' in one language and not in another? There used to be a theory that all synthetic languages eventually evolved into isolating ones, but I don't think it's that widely held any more. 'Accelerated by language contact' is exactly what I'm talking about. it doesn't matter to what I'm arguing whether the language contact involved is Norman-Old English or Anglo-Saxon-Old Norse.
 
That depends a bit on establishing an acceptable definition of a creole. As for the 'mixing' (for want of a word) of Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic, see the papers I have linked to.
I'll repeat it, no one denies that languages mix. What these scholars (and me) are saying is that not every mixture is a creolisation, a hybridisation, because otherwise we'd end up in calling almost all languages like that, and what would these concept then mean? Essentially nothing. Therefore it's a self-defeating position to call every mixture a creole.
 
 
See my explanation above. It would also mean that there is no point in calling a language 'mixed' because all languages are mixed (in your view). There'd be no point in saying a language had a grammar either, since all I can think of are analysable in grammatical terms.
 
Anyway I don't think all mixtures are creoles, merely mixtures that result from the permanent merging of two or more peoples originally speaking different languages[1]. and that's determinable from history. Is there no point at all in saying the people of a country are a mix of X and Y, when just about the peoples of every country are mixes of something or other - and therefore hybrids?
 
On the other hand, as i pointed out, I'm quite ready to accept that after some while continuing to use the term 'creole' for a language may be inappropriate, as long as one accepts that is descends from a creole.
 
[1] There is for instance no American-Amerindian creole because one group basically eliminated the other from its territory. One of the things that has to be put straight here is the idea that the Anglo-Saxons did to the Britons what the American settlers did to the 'Indians'.
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Originally posted by gcle2003

I don't have any problem with what follows here. It seems to be merely rhetorical, claiming that every language can be claimed to be a creole.
 
That's like saying every dog can claim to be a cross, so therefore the concept of cross breeds is invalid.
 
Essentially, just as after a certain time cross breeds of dog (or any animal) end up being classified as pure breeds, after a certain time (much longer than with dogs) creoles are no longer classified as creoles, but as unique languages.
 
When Byerly Turk was put to its first English mare, the colt that resulted was a cross. A hybrid. In language terms a creole. Three hundred years later thoroughbred horses are not viewed as crosses or hybrids but as purebred. Essentiall the same is true of languages (and indeed human races).
 
Which of course is not to say that some races and breeds and languages originate through splitting and separation. It simply says that what is not seen as a creole today may well have been one originally.
 
Saying 'any language is a creole' and meaning 'any language may have been a creole in the past' is therefore not a reason to drop the term. It merely indicates that the language evolved as the result of the mingling of more than one people each with its own prior language.
This is a straw man, no offense.
If you're not saying that you shouldn't call a language a creole under my definition because any language waould then have been a creole at some point in its past, then what are you saying?
If you consider it rhetoric it doesn't mean it actually is.
Granted. That's why I wrote 'it seems to be rhetorical'.
 
 The reason why the term is dropped is because it does not create distinctiveness which is one of the essential conditions of having formal definitions. You fail to argue against that, so I don't see what you argue against.
But I am creating distinctiveness. I'm talking only about a situation in which two peoples/cultures mingle and interbreed and develop a full-fledged language that contains elements of both their languages. That is, for instance, distinct from when an occupying elite takes over a country and does not mingle and interbreed with the existing inhabitants (as, say, with the British in Kenya). You may and probably will see pidgins develop in such situations but they won't coalesce or solidify or whatever into a language that both peoples now see as their own native language. It's also distinct from the situation in which a dominant culture forces a subordinate one into adopting its language (though that may not happen very often).
 
Similarly it is distinct from the situation where, though the cultures may for a long time get along well enough, the two languages do not merge and are kept artificially separate, which I think happened with the French rule in Indo-China.
 
Moreover, all the scholars invoked so far (including your source) said that what a creole really is. "Saying 'any language is a creole' [...] merely indicates that the language evolved as the result of the mingling of more than one people each with its own prior language" it only suggests that you still do not know what a creole is or you don't agree with any definition given so far.
Actually I agree with the definition Crystal gives, or I wouldn't have brought him up in the first place. I believe you misread it.
 Which is your right, but it doesn't mean you actually have a point and anyway you should say it clearly you disagree with all the definitions provided so far (also that from Cambridge Encyclopedia of English language which was initially your source) and provide one of your own and of course justification for it. You can invent any terms to suit your position, but similarly you could call languages "tripods" (because, let's say, there are three persons in pronouns - 1st, 2nd and 3rd and you metaphorically want to consider the "legs" of the verbs), "washing mashines", "dynamites", "leprechauns" or anything else. Actually replacing in your discourse "creole" with any of these it won't change anything, because it's an ad-hoc definition invented to support a position, it is nothing methodologically, nothing meaningful, nothing worth considering, nothing scholarly. You provided so far no justification and no reference to argue that creolisation is simply mixture, fusion, mingling or whatever else you described it.
I didn't say it was simply mixture, but that it was mixture in a specific set of circumstances. Crystal says that a creole is 'a pidgin language that has become the mother-tongue of a community'. He says a pidgin is 'a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not share a common language. They have a limited vocabulary, a reduced grammatical structure and a much narrower range of functions then the languages that gave rise to them.' 
 
I can agree with all of that. And I would also accept, if you want, that most languages have gone through such an experience at some point in their life time, even if it may have been in prehistory so that we're unaware of it.
 
We have some essential elements for a creole:
a) a community of peoples who did not originally share a common tongue
b) that community now has a new mother tongue, and the originals have been discarded (by that community).
c) to be a mother tongue a language must be complex enough to fulfil all the normal functions of a language
d) that new mother tongue is based on a pidgin developed so the two original communities could communicate with one another.
e) that pidgin in its day was not felt to be a mother-tongue, but merely an aid to understanding in everyday affairs
f) therefore that pidgin tended to be simpler and more restricted than eithe of the two original languages, because it did not have to fulfil all the functions of a mother tongue
 
Those are all plucked from Crystal's definition. How does it differ from mine?
 
The biological analogy it does not any hold any water.
It wasn't a biological analogy but a linguistic one. Over time the linguistic classification of something may change.
First, languages are not living beings (thus justification is begged).
Irrelevant. I wasn't talking about them because they were living beings, or even referring to the fact that they were living beings. Just that once they were called crosses and are now called purebred. Similarly what we now call a ship would not have been called one 300 years ago, and what we used to call a frigate is very different from what we now call a frigate.
Second, languages differ not only from region to region, but from speaker from speaker, even in different moments of life of a speaker (which learns the language better or on the contrary forgets it). If by an analogy it would be suggested that langauge is a living organism, then this should be what we express (or better said what we could potentially express) in every moment with our mind and our articulating capacities (otherwise the analogy would be transformed into one of cancerous breeds having their DNA mutating continuously during their life Wink). One of the materials presented by us in this thread (I will look it later if you missed it, now I'm in hurry) reasonably questioned the "Standard English" reference as virtually no speakers actually speak it, we all speak mutated forms of English. This is valid for any language and any speaker.
True, but I don't see the point. I've come up with lots of West Country dialect stuff here myself.
Third, as much as the analogy goes it supports my position, not yours. English is classified as a Germanic language,
That's begging the question. The question is whether it should be classified as a Germanic language or a borderline Germanic/Romance one. And I suspect you may well find the answer to that depends on whether you are talking to a linguist as someone who studies the history of language or a linguist who studies and works with modern languages as a translator/interpreter.
 it has the pedigree of a Germanic language. If it would be a cross-breed as you claim, it would have been a Germanic-Romance langauge.
Arguing that something must be so because it's always said to be isn't very convincing. It wouldbe more convincing to explain why English forms its plurals with an 's' the same way French does if it's only a Germanic language.  Or why you can say 'I'm going to go to London' and 'Je vais aller à Londres' but not 'Ich gehe gehen zu London'. In fact If I'm flying to London or I'm walking there I can say 'I'm going to London' or 'Je vais à Londres' but you can't say 'ich gehe zu London' unless I'm walking (and I'm informed you can't or at least don't do it in Danish either).
 
Or in English and French 'The boy I don't know' or 'Le petit je ne connais pas' whereas German has to be 'Die Knabe kenne ich nicht.' (That's also Danish word order.)
 
And so on and so on.
 
But it may only be when you earn your living from this sort of stuff that you really pay attention to it.
Find me the association granting the latter pedigree (i.e. the scholarship attesting this taxonomical position for English) and you may have a point.
I'm giving you specific language evidence about where English resembles French and differs from German. It doesn't need scholarship except to confirm those examples are correct. But if you look them up you'll find I'm right, so it's up to you to come up with an explanation.
 Otherwise it's just dodging the question - bring scholars to argue for the creoleness of Old English, Middle English (on that you can find some in the bibliography of the materials I linked) and Standard English.
I dropped saying modern standard English was a creole and substituted 'descended from a creole'. Your own sources gave trhe evidence for Middle English being one, and I've alsi given you papers about Old English being one (though I accept you probably haven't had tme to read them.
 
 Find evidence that the increasing mixture of English with other language (which continued long after the birth of Middle English) is creolisation or as you called it earlier hybridisation.
I will when you deal with the evidence and scholarship I've already presented.
 
What's wrong with that? Most Romance languages are creoles in origin, resulting from the contact between Latins, Celts, and various Germanic tribes. (Slavic in the case of Rumanian.)
 
Yiddish certainly is a creole. So is Ladino. Bulgarian I don't know, but isn't it supposed to be a fusion of Turkic and Slav features, like Bulgarians themselves? Like I said, I don't know but that's what I've heard.
All your claims are false according to the scholarly definitions exposed on the thread so far.
Where have you posted that Yiddish, Ladino, and the Romance languages aren't descended from creoles? The history of the Roman occupation of Gaul and the subsequent incursion of Franks and other Germanics parallels that of England very closely. The same is true of Spain and Portugal, complicated by the later Moorish occupation. Italy's somewhat different but not that much.
 
You also avoided to comment about the entire Germanic branch being a creole one. Of course, it would annihilate entirely your point.
I avoided it because I don't know enough about it. I'm not sure anybody does. Anyway if it is a creole (i.e. it's the result of a moderately lengthy period of cohabitation and miscegenation as rulers or ruled or equals with non Germanic peoples) why would that invalidate my point?
In the bibliography I'm preparing I'll show the potential contact between proto-Germanic branch and the other IE and non-IE languages.  Then you either will be forced to admit all the Germanic languages are creoles or to drop this concept.
 
That's a bit silly. I have no idea really at all about the history of migrations and settlement of the proto-Germanic tribes, so I'll welcome the information. However I don't see how, a priori, it would be necessary for me to say either 'the Germanic languages are all creoles' or 'there's no such thing as a creole'. Why the forced choice? You might as well say I must either say Japanese is a creole or there's no such thing as creole?
 
Why, a priori, couldn't I say 'Germanic languages are not creoles but Louisiana creole is'? 
 
I think offhand it is quite likely that at some point there were creoles in the Germanic language group. What's special about the Germanics?


Edited by gcle2003 - 29-May-2008 at 21:04
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Germany was eventually "conquered" at least once more in the history, otherwise you wouldn't have Germanic speakers there.
I don't follow the 'once more'. Once more after what?
Maybe it was my defectuous phrasing as I was looking back in time. Once more before. When the Germanic speakers settled the lands where they are to be attested in Roman times.

Scandinavia as far as I know hasn't ever been settled by anyone but Scandinavians.
This is either a truism (every settler of Scandinavia is a Scandinavian by definition) or it is incorrect if you refer to Scandinavian Germanic speakers. Scandinavia is known to be inhabited by man since the last Ice age, long before anything we would classify as IE, even less Germanic is theoretized.

And it is very likely they encountered other people who spoke other language which is now gone and probably interacted with some Germanic languages/dialects in ways we cannot see (not knowing anything about these extinct languages).
It certainly might have, yes. But not to our knowledge. That sounds a bit like Flaja asking who the Saxons were influenced by before they were Saxons.
You're misunderstanding my point. If all the Germanic languages were influenced by other languages, it means they are all hybrids. And I didn't ask "who".

On the other hand, some of the aspects of the prehistoric languages and language contacts are known (there are even suppositions about language unattested and extinct based on the traces they left in later languages and phonologies), so contrary to your suggestion, asking "who the Saxons were influenced by before they were Saxons" is not a charicatural question, it is valid scholarly one.

Östen Dahl and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm - The Circum-Baltic languages: Typology and Contact, 2001
"Germanic languages came to be spoken in Scandinavia as the result of a language shift" vol I, Östen Dahl, p. 221, I excerpted from a larger context about various theories placing the beginning of IE languages in Scandinavia some as early as 4000-3000 BC, some as late as 1000-500 BC)
"Scandinavia and the Baltic countries constitute an area, where Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages have been in contact and influenced one another since time immemorial" (vol I, Lars-Gunnar Larsson, p. 237)
"we can at least postulate [...] the existence of extensive bilingual areas" and "Stang (1972) suggests an earlier Sprachbund situation to account for at least some of the lexical isoglosses of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic" (vol II, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Bernhard Wälchli, p. 618, this is a section about prehistoric contacts)

However one book which goes in detail on this topic is Henning Andersen's Language Contacts in Prehistory, 2003. Relevant to this discussion is particularly the chapter "Stratum and Shadow - A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European West" authored by Bernard Mees. Many theories of prehistoric linguistic contact in Europe are browsed and critically examined, for the moment. I will quote from this book also as a continuation for this, but also as a partial answer for a question of yours.

It wuld be interesting to know which other language groups you're referring to. I said that some east German dialects had, I believe, some Slavonic elements.  I don't think Yiddish exemplifies Hebrew influence on German, but apart from the Jews and the Slavs, what non-Germanic peoples have lived closely enough with the Germans to have significantly influenced the language?
 
I'll just excerpt some archaic loanwords in the Germanic langauge (or arguably some that archaic that we should talk of what will become the group of Germanic languages):
p. 26: "Gm. Reich represent the continuation of a PGmc. *rīkaz "ruler" (Go. reiks), evidently a loan from Celtic, -rīx "king", i.e. /ri:gs/ (cf. the plural -rīges). It also evidences Grimm's law, making it a comparatively early loan - in fact a pre-Germanic one to those who cite Grimm's law as the characteristic mark of Germanic. Gm. Amt, on the other hand, represents PGmc. *ambahtaz "Sevitor" (Go. andbahts), evidently a loan from Celtic *ambaxtos "client, retainer" (Gallo-Latin ambactus). But it does not betray Grimm's law. [...] Most [my note: loans] were adopted in prehistory, some obviously at the end of Germanic prehistory (Go. andbahts), others a few centuries earlier, during Germanic prehistory but Celtic early history (e.g., Go. reiks, OHG marah), and  others still in both Germanic and Celtic prehistory (e.g., Go aiþs, arbi, dulgs and OHG gîsal). [...] The Celts were supplanted later in this role by the Romans, as is reflected in the increasing penetration of Latin loans into Germanic as the Germani moved clearer in the light of history. There certainly are many Celtic loans in early Germanic, but these were made over many centuries, and represent a continuum rather than a single stratum"
p. 27: "In 1985 Dougals Adams showed that the Northwestern Indo-European word for "apple" *abVI- (Gaulish avallo, OE œppel, OCS (j)ablŭki, "apple" etc.) displays [...] a late Indo-European feature [...]. It is probably ultimately a loanword, perhaps a metathetic variant of the southern "apple" word *maHlo- (Lat. mālum, Homeric Gk. mêlon, etc.), i.e. PIE *Hmlo-, with *amlo- > ablo-, possibly ocurring first in Celtic"

Being conservative is more sui generis. Continuing to forming sentence structure in the same way is more sui generis. Writing verse in the same way is more sui generis. Continuing to be isolating, agglutinative or synthetic is more sui generis.
These beg the question "why"?
It doesn't beg the question. It doesn't even consider it.
This is - no offense - a stupid remark. Any claim pretending to be taken seriously begs for justification. If you can't justify, you have no point. This is valid for any discourse pretending to be rational and eventually scholarly.
You can't define "sui generis Germanic languages" without justifying (or being able to justify) why you chose that definition, on what rational and empyrical grounds it lies on. You could say as well "Being a leprechaun is more sui generis", it doesn't make absolutely no difference. It is a claim of same strength, having the same justification as yours.

Is really conservative being more sui generis?
Yes, that's pretty much what the word means. Carrying on as you were before.
No, it doesn't. "Sui generis" means "of its own kind". For instance, being a "sui generis progressive" means actually the opposite of being conservative. Germanic languages are already defined by scholars, so being "sui generis" it means only to comply to these definitions. And being conservative is not a criterion.

So, the Germanic languages before the second consonantal shift were more Germanic than after it?
They were closer to proto-Germanic. They were less sui generis after the shift.
This is a straw man. The question was not which language is closer to proto-Germanic, but which langauge is more Germanic. And Germanic languages are not defined as "those language which are closest to proto-Germanic", so the equivocation is not granted without further justification which is lacking.
Moreover this merely dodges my previous point. The proto-Germanic language was also created by innovation.

You now also say that being synthetic is more sui generis for Germanic languages. But most European languages (Romance included) have synthetic aspects, new words can be used by joining words, or adding prefixes or suffixes. Anticonstitutionnellement is a French word, isn't it? So is électro-encéphalographique.
'Anticonstitutionellement' is NOT a string of nouns bolted together. Neither is électro-encéphalographique' (if it exists - 'électroencéphalographie' does).
However you didn't say "a string of nouns bolted together" but "synthetic". "Anticonstitutionellement" synthetizes (what better verb could I choose?) "in a manner contrary to the constitution", "électro-encéphalographique" (there is such a word) synthetizes "which pertains to electroencephalograhy" or more clearly "which pertains to measuring electrical activity produced by the brain".
Also you don't need to know much French to realize that French has also compound words formed only by nouns. Just switching to the field of biology which was amazingly often mentioned in this thread we find words like: "chou-fleur" or "oiseau-mouche", which show also an aspect of synthesis.

Also, let's not exaggerate with agglutination. Is really a standard for "Germanicity" to have long phrases bound in single words? I know it is not, and don't forget we have early attested Germanic languages and they are not that agglutinative.

This has nothing to do with agglutination. Finnish is an agglutinative language. Some Amerindian languages are agglutinative and Japanese and Swahili are. Agglutination is an alternative to simple declension systems with separate parts of speech like the I-E languages typically have.

It has everything to do with agglutination if you know what the term means. Agglutination and synthesis are partially synonymous. In Language Typology and Language Universals, a book edited by several scholars and published in 2001, it is said (p. 677): "Every agglutination seems to be a "yesterday's analytism", i.e. it is morphology which was syntax (and in fact did not completely cease to be)"
David Crystal defines agglutination here: http://books.google.com/books?id=bSxjt1irqh4C&pg=PA17&dq=agglutination+linguistics&lr=&as_brr=3&sig=jt37QrC2_k7Q5yriUfkelzF9TDQ
The word "disestablishment" is provided as example of agglutination in English.

Scanning your reply I see you dodged earlier my point that being isolated and being agglutinative are incompatible in the same definition. David Crystal remarks that in his definition, too.


Plus, what you say it may not be really a reference. For instance, you said that being more conservative is being more Germanic.
If you're Germanic to start with, yes. Being more conservative means being keener on keeping things the way they are.


But this can be merely your opinion, not a relevant, scholarly, meaningful criterion. 

I don't think so. It's what 'conservative' means. Staying the same.
These comments just go ad nauseam. But no justification, no case.



Edited by Chilbudios - 30-May-2008 at 17:15
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