[tied] Re: Creole Romance?

> What about other categorial simplifications, such as the collapse

of the

> simple/complex distinction in adjectival declension, or the loss of

the

> dual number? New preterite endings from the cliticised copula are a
> relatively recent development, preceded by several centuries during
> which Polish had an analytic "passé composé" only. The imperfect

and the

> aorist became extinct very early. (Of the complex tenses, the

pluperfect

> has already dropped out of everyday use.)

I think it wanted to say that it is a matter of degree. Languages of
trade and languages of hierarchy are idealised end points on a scale.

> > I guess what I'm saying is that 'creole-like' = 'user-
> > friendliness' or learnability, the co-extensionailty stemming

from

> > the fact that this is why the language was invented (or 're-

built')

> > in the first place.
>
> But restoring learnability and getting rid of excessive complexity

are

> ever-present factors in linguistic evolution, even in the absence

of

> significant external forces. That's what analogical change is all

about.

> Take Polish masculine noun stems with a final velar, where the

Slavic

> palatalisations gave rise to Old Polish alternations such

as /g/ : /Z/ :

> /dz/ (e.g. nom.sg. <wróg> 'enemy', loc. <wrodze>, voc. <wroz.e>).

These

> have now been eliminated by selecting different (non-palatalising)
> inflectional endings (Modern Polish <wróg>, <wrogu>, <wrogu>,

respectively).

And Russian went even further <voda>, <v vode>.

>
> > And this is also why English is such a success,
> > once enough people mumble to obliterate any difference between

acc.

> > and dat., there's no need for memorising 'durch, für, gegen ...'
> > (take the acc.) any more.
>
> We're in the middle of this year's entrance exams in Poznan. The

day

> after tomorrow I'll start interviewing the candidates in the oral
> examination. Alas to those who mumble in order to cover up the
> deficiencies of their English! 'Enough of your creole, young

man!' :-Z

>

Ah, you have missed the whole point of English all these years! ;-)

No, but seriously, in exactly that moment you are using authority.
Which English can be used for, there are still a few irregularities
you may catch out your opponent with, which are jealously guarded by
the 'language police', after all these years. And we can always
introduce new irregularities, Latin and Greek plurals.

There is a problem in a hierarchy: how do you regulate who's right
and who's wrong? If you tried to get into people's arguments to
evaluate them, you'd have to have encyclopedic knowledge and plenty
of time, therefore it is generally acknowledged that the social value
of all knowledge can be transformed into grammatical knowledge, in
the Marxian sense: if you don't know what he's going on about, you
can always categorise him by his language. Therefore all hierarchical
(ie. land-locked) countries have a rudeness relation centered on
their capital: people in the capital may be rude to people
immediately outside it because of their language, they in their turn
may be rude to those further out etc. In short, the rudeness relation
is a partial ordering which orders the nation into concentric rings
and its transitive closure defines the nation.
At the border unfortunately there is an abnormal situation: when
people there are rude to those further out in the wilderness, they
talk back, and are not ashamed of themselves. This is of course an
intolerable situation and therefore it is necessary at regular
intervals to send punitive expeditions into this furthest wilderness
to teach them how to behave.

Torsten