Re: [tied] Re: Creole Romance? [was: Thracian , summing up]

At 9:47:40 AM on Monday, June 23, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:

> In every encounter between Scandinavians you have a pidgin
> situation: speakers of languages that are not easily
> mutually comprehensible.

If it were a classic pidgin situation, the languages would
not be mutually comprehensible, period.

> The result is that each speaker (based on his inclination
> do so) bends his native language a little towards that of
> the other speaker;

A perfectly normal contact phenomenon distinct from
pidginization. Why insist on distorting standard
terminology?

>>>> No TV, no textbooks, no teachers. A passable colloquial
>>>> Latin should be poossible, yes. Take the tourist traps
>>>> today. Do the natives there speak a passable colloquial
>>>> English? Do they speak pidgin English? Depends on the
>>>> person. (And the observer).

>> The question is not what might have happened but whether
>> the Romance languages show traces of passing through a
>> pidgin/creole phase. They don't.

> No, I was making a historical observation, not a
> linguistic one, and commenting that the view of those two
> disciplines don't match.

An inapt modern analogy isn't a historical observation, and
there is nothing in the historical record that suggests a
pidgin/creole phase. I certainly wouldn't rule out the
possibility of transitory local pidgins, but it's clear that
any such were superseded by Latin.

Brian