Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

At 1:57:16 PM on Sunday, February 8, 2009, tgpedersen wrote:

> There was a move towards seeing English as a Creole
> language arising from the meeting of Anglo-Saxon and
> French in post-1066 England some years back. It was
> countered with the observation that similar creole-like
> processes took place in the area I mentioned: Dutch, Low
> German Continental Scandinavian.

Hardly the only counterargument. Those who are actually
interested should read Thomason & Kaufman. Or, for the
methodological issues, Roger Lass on 'contact romantics'.

[...]

> No Saxon in England would argue with a Norman that it was
> eyren,

True: the OE plural was <æg(e)ru>. The plural <eyren> was
an innovation in Southern ME, which generalized the <-en>
plural almost as enthusiastically as the Northern varieties
generalized the <-es> plural.

Brian