[tied] Re: Creole Romance?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

> At 5:41:23 AM on Saturday, July 5, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Perhaps this example can shed some on what I mean.
>
> > This is from a preface Caxton wrote to a book he printed:
>
> > / For we englysshe men / ben borne vnder the domynacyon of
> > the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste / but euer wauerynge /
> > wexynge one season / and waneth & dyscreaseth another
> > season / And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one
> > shyre varyeth from a nother. In so moche that in my dayes
> > happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in
> > tamyse for to haue sayled ouer the see into zelande / and
> > for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte forlond, and wente to
> > lande for to refreshe them: And one of theym named
> > sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete:
> > and specyally he axyd after eggys: And the goode wyf
> > answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe. And the
> > marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe,
> > but wolde haue hadde egges / and she vnderstode hym not /
> > And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren
> > / then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel / Loo,
> > what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren
> > / certaynly it is harde to playse euery man / by cause of
> > dyuersite & chaunge of langage.
>
> > (See BTW message 6317).
>
> > Caxton is obviously worrying about what is the right form
> > of English.
>
> I would say rather that he is concerned to use a version of
> English that will be understood as widely as possible.

Yes. And then he makes a choice. BTW the languages of the records of
the North German cities switch from Low German to High German within
the scope of twenty years in the 16th century. At the same time as
the Hanse finally declines. Don't tell me there's no connection here.
And but for the grace of God (or loss of trade) etc England and
English might have gone down a similar path.

>
> > Note some of my favorite hobby-horses: The mercer, who is
> > used to trading, uses plural -s, the wyfe is not
> > indifferent but indignant that someone should speak to her
> > using plural -s
>
> This is a considerable misrepresentation of the passage.
> The difference between <egges> and <eyren> goes far beyond
> the nature of the plural inflexion. We are not told that
> the wife was indignant at all; the merchant was angry
> because his perfectly good English (from his point of view)
> had been dismissed as incomprehensible French.
>

Right, I should have re-read the story. But obviously, the merchant's
English is only perfectly good in hindsight; given alternative
political developments, -eren might have survived in English, and the
merchant would now stand condemned (and also by you) as the speaker
of a corrupt, French-influenced substandard dialect that didn't make
it.

> > (note the similar reaction in the Rhine-German 'doktors'
> > case), and we know the outcome, in no small measure due to
> > people like Caxton who eventually decided that -s was OK,
>
> By Caxton's day the weak plural was pretty much confined to
> the southern dialects, as I recall, especially southeastern.
> By the way, in those dialects there was a also quite a bit
> of analogical regularization, but it went in the other
> direction, in favor of <-en> plurals.
>
> > You might even interpret the story to mean that as late as
> > in Caxton's time, people in England used one language at
> > home and another, more regular one in the market.
>
> Whether any of them did or not, there's nothing in Caxton's
> story that suggests such an interpretation.
>

And there's nothing to contradict it.

> > I know that traditionally -s plural is considered a
> > Northern thing,
>
> Naturally: it is. And since the Northern dialects of Old
> English lost word-final /n/, generalizing the <-es> plural
> made good sense, especially after word-final schwa also
> dropped.

The problem with your analysis is that you see language development
as something autonomous, while I see it as driven by other factors.
Thus in a total description of the historical situation (not just
linguistic), Occam would be in my favor.

>
> > but that's also where the markets (and Norse villages)
> > were.
>
> There were markets all over -- probably more in the south,
> given the distribution of population. London was the only
> city of any size even in the late 15th century.
>

But the Northern markets is where the Hanse traders went to buy wool.
Thus you would have more linguistic diversity on the market, and more
motivation to use a 'least common denominator' language to
communicate (as Scandinavians do).

Torsten