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

>
> > As time goes, creoles are superseded by still more credible
> > imitations of the donor.
>
> Who says so?

Watch your TV. Creoles are being replaced with 'proper' English or
French.

>
> > "The opposite view" of those who disagreed with me was
> >
> > 1) There is no variation by region in the type of vulgar Latin

that

> > is found in the Roman provinces.
>
> Up to some historical moment. When central power collapsed, several
> different convergence areas arose naturally.

Much earlier than the Strasbourg oaths.

> > 2) We can follow step by step the progression from Latin to the
> > modern Romance languages.
> >
> > I find it difficult to reconcile the two statements.
>
> So you find difficult to accept that people speaking initially
> the same language can split into several different populations,
> ending up by speaking different tongues?!

No, I find it difficult to reconcile it with the traditional view of
the Latin to Romance transition as a smooth continuous process.

> > Any encyclopedia article on a Romance language will tell you:
> > "the first text in Romance language X is ... in the year ...".
> > It seems to me there is assumed to be a break here.
>
> There is really a break, but not in the language which evolves
> continuously. The break is in attestation and recognizing the
> evolution has gone far enough.
>

In other words, we can't follow in detail the development in stages
from Latin to the Romance language, but we strongly believe that's
what happened.

> > To give an example: French is supposed to have begun with the
> > Strasbourg oaths.
>
> No. Strasbourg Oaths mark the first clear Romance text, recognized
> as such (in opposition with Latin). French starts conventionally
> with Strasbourg Oaths, but the day before Ludwig pronouncing the
> canonical text "Pro Deo amur [...]", people in Gaul were still
> speaking the same vernacular.
>

If people in Gaul were all speaking the same vernacular, why the anti-
patois excesses of the Revolutionary French government? And the
Strasbourg oath don't passively register or 'mark' anything, they
were created by a political act; a Latin oath alone would not have
been secular enough, a German one alone would not have assured the
loyalty of the nobility of the French-speaking nobility, therefore:
parallel texts in German and whatever good people spoke in a suitable
western region of the realm.

> > It is interesting to learn from one of the latest postings that
> > Charlemagne insisted on a "correct" pronunciation of Latin.
>
> No, this is a different story. I think you should read first that
> chapter from Dag Norberg's book reccomended by Piotr some time ago,
> which is called "A brief history of Medieval Latin". You find the
> pdf in the "Files" section of cybalist.
>

But I was not interested in Medieval Latin in isolation, but in how a
gap appeared between Medieval Latin and Old French.

> > This looks like going half the way down the path of creoles,
>
> Looks like but it isn't. For the very same diachronical reasons.
>
> > but why don't we have a word for that phenomenon?
>
> We do have. "Continuous evolution" fits well.
>

It doesn't fit what I describe.

> > As for the fact that no pidgin or creole Latin has been found:

what

> > about those semi-intelligible inscriptions that make experts give
> > up?
>
> What are you talking about? Graffiti?! Just look on your walls
> and try to understand what's written there.
>

That'll be difficult. Most of them are in languages I don't speak.

Torsten