Re: [tied] Re: Was proto-romance a pidgin?

At 4:22:26 AM on Thursday, May 1, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

>> >> and some of the lost irregularity is reinstated.

>> Anything "lost" in language cannot be reinstated. Lost
>> irregularities in particular can never be "reinstated",
>> but can be recreated by analogies and the like (the way
>> English makes new irregularities with "thunk" "praught"
>> etc) but as such they bear no necessary relationship to
>> the original situation.

>> If they are "reinstated" they cannot have been lost.

> Sorry for my imprecise wording. What I meant is that
> conservative forms survive for special situations in
> special groups, and from there are reinstated as 'proper'
> forms.

I don't have anything handy that would give me any details,
but I know that there were several Middle Dutch dialects and
that some of them differed considerably. The change that
you mentioned need be no more than a shift in cultural
dominance from one of these dialects to another; such shifts
have certainly occurred. In that case there would be no
need to invoke 'special situations in special groups'.

Brian