Re: Was proto-romance a pidgin?

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "P&G" <petegray@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2003 10:06 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Was proto-romance a pidgin?
>
>
> > > I am looking for materials that either prove or disprove that

proto

> > > romance was a pidgin that was later creolized. My focus is on

the

> > possible creolization of >Vulgar Latin by Celtic
> > > speaking populations.
> >
> > (1) By using the word "pidgin" you apparently mean more than

substrate

> > influence. Unless your understanding of "pidgin" is different

from mine,

> > you are asserting that proto-Romance uses Celtic vocabulary in

Latin-based

> > structures, or Latin vocabulary in Celtic-based structures, or

some mix.

I don't get it. Tok Pisin doesn't live up to your criteria, as far
as I know.

> > Either claim is bizarre. Both the structures and vocabulary of
> > Proto-Romance are thoroughly and clearly Latin. Even the

phonology develops

> > through expected and normal channels.

Channels? Which are?

> > A pidgin should show

(a) lack of surface grammatical complexity

relative to the original language, which is what the romance
languages do


(b) lack of morphological complexity


do.


(c) semantic transparency (i.e. words built up by compounding
simpler elements)

PIE would fulfill that criterion


(d) Vocabulary reduction. None of these appear in proto-Romance.

So there are no words in Latin which have no descendants in Romance?

> > (b) Proto-Romance explains the origin of Portuguese, Sicilian,

Sardinian etc

> > across to Romanian. Are you really asserting that a Celtic-

Latin pidgin

> > could replace all other forms of language throughout the entire

empire?

It's like asserting that Tok Pisin might replace all the language of
New Guinea.

> > That seems unlikely.

No.

> > So for both linguistic and historic reasons I think you will

find your case

> > hard to prove, unless you soften it and limit it somewhat -

perhaps there

> > was strong Celtic substrate influence in a certain area - like

Gaul.

> >
> > Peter

Yes, try fabric softener. It will make your theories silky smooth.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> Peter,
>
> I completely agree. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that Prot-

Romance _absorbed_ a number of pidging-like mixed codes, but it is
the Latin core, not those lateral influences, that defines Proto-
Romance. If one wants an example of a genuine pidgin based on early
Romance, Lingua Franca will do: it had almost no inflectional
morphology (a verb had only one form for all purposes), and a
vocabulary that probably started out as late common Romance but was
supplemented over the centuries with bits of Spaniash, Occitan,
Italian, Arabic, etc.

>
> Piotr
>

Lingua Franca never had any native speakers, right? Perhaps the
whole pidgin -> creole theory needs a revision; perhaps the creoles
are spoken by those who were participating in, but not actively
travelling in the trade network. That would mean that when the trade
network breaks down, you have a number of independent but similar
creoles in the nodes of the former network; typically coasts, since
many early networks were sea-borne (and that ensures that they are
afterwards contiguous).

Torsten