Re: [tied] Was proto-romance a pidgin?

Peter,

I completely agree. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that Prot-Romance _absorbed_ a number of pidging-like mixed codes, but it is the Latin core, not those lateral influences, that defines Proto-Romance. If one wants an example of a genuine pidgin based on early Romance, Lingua Franca will do: it had almost no inflectional morphology (a verb had only one form for all purposes), and a vocabulary that probably started out as late common Romance but was supplemented over the centuries with bits of Spaniash, Occitan, Italian, Arabic, etc.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: "P&G" <petegray@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2003 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Was proto-romance a pidgin?


> > I am looking for materials that either prove or disprove that proto
> > romance was a pidgin that was later creolized. My focus is on the
> possible creolization of >Vulgar Latin by Celtic
> > speaking populations.
>
> (1) By using the word "pidgin" you apparently mean more than substrate
> influence. Unless your understanding of "pidgin" is different from mine,
> you are asserting that proto-Romance uses Celtic vocabulary in Latin-based
> structures, or Latin vocabulary in Celtic-based structures, or some mix.
> Either claim is bizarre. Both the structures and vocabulary of
> Proto-Romance are thoroughly and clearly Latin. Even the phonology develops
> through expected and normal channels.
> A pidgin should show (a) lack of surface grammatical complexity (b) lack
> of morphological complexity (c) semantic transparency (i.e. words built up
> by compounding simpler elements) (d) Vocabulary reduction. None of these
> appear in proto-Romance.
>
> (b) Proto-Romance explains the origin of Portuguese, Sicilian, Sardinian etc
> across to Romanian. Are you really asserting that a Celtic-Latin pidgin
> could replace all other forms of language throughout the entire empire?
> That seems unlikely.
>
> So for both linguistic and historic reasons I think you will find your case
> hard to prove, unless you soften it and limit it somewhat - perhaps there
> was strong Celtic substrate influence in a certain area - like Gaul.
>
> Peter