Re: [tied] Re: Skiri Bastarnae

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2001 2:08 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Skiri Bastarnae

> Unless you consider eg. English (and the other "North Sea Germanic languages") to be Creole.

 

I don't. Why should I? Some people speak about the "partial creolisation" of *Middle* English as a result of contacts with Old Norse and Norman French. This is, however, loose and controversial usage. At any rate it must not be interpreted as a "pidgin -> creole" scenario (which involves the structural complication of a rudimentary contact language, rather than contact-induced simplification). English did not originate as a trade pidgin.

> I am now in the unhappy predicament of having to choose one source over the other on the descent of the Goths: Jordanes and Procopius, having met Goths, being perhaps of Gothic descent, and even having to deal with them on a daily basis, and Piotr Gãsiorowski, acute-minded linguist, writing 1600 years later. Which should I choose? I once someone who studied history. She told me the subject of methodology was the hardest.

 

Do you really need a hint? Linguists are better qualified to judge in such matters than native speakers. I don't know about Denmark, but very few Poles know or care where Polish came from and how it developed.

> Yes, the lure of "similar-sounding". Where would we all on this be without it?

 

The most significant progress in historical linguistics came when scholars learnt to distrust this lure.

> Would I be thinking wishfully, if I assumed the (Pre-)Goths, Getae
(or whoever) called their language *got-isk- ?

 

The Goths apparently called it *gutiska-, but I asked about unattested **getisk- and attested <geta->, the Getae's term for themselves (with no umlauting environment -- why not <gota->?). You'd have to invent a whole battery of ad hoc "laws" to produce these forms.
 
> Piotr