Re: Japanese as a creole language?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>
> Torsten:
> >I don't get it. Do you understand 'creole' and 'IE' as mutually
> >exclusive?
>
> That's right, you don't get it. French is mostly attributable to IE

and

> can be firmly traced back to Latin. There _are_ creoles languages

based

> partly on IE languages so, no, it's not mutually exclusive. But

standard

> French and "creole" _is_ mutually exclusive.

Because?

>
> >And BTW French is full of Germanic loanwords.
>
> Every language has loans. The fact that a language has loans

doesn't make

> it a creole. Since French underwent a long evolutionary process

that can

> be traced right back to Latin, we know that it's not some suddenly

created

> language that popped out of nowhere because of contact between some
> Language X (and perhaps also Language Y, Z, etc) and Frankish.

Ah, a math riddle. Now I get it. X = Low Latin.

>
> So French is not a creole at all.
>

So? It seems you are making a distinction between slowly
evolving "natural languages" and suddenly out-popping creoles. What
makes you think the development of creoles isn't slow?

> English is also not a creole for the same reasons. We can trace its

slow

> evolution back to Germanic and French loans don't hinder us from

doing

> this.

For the so-reason, apparently.

> As for Japanese, I have to admit that creolisation isn't entirely
> impossible when I think on it. The problem is that we don't know

enough

> about its long, unwritten prehistory to be absolutely certain.
>

No, it seems it's a precondition for you to consider it a creole.

In the books I read, the hallmark of a creole is the loss of
grammatical categories. Check up on Afrikaans.

Torsten