From: tgpedersen
Message: 21474
Date: 2003-05-03
> At 4:22:26 AM on Thursday, May 1, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:Add 'sociolects' and you have basically rephrased my statement.
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
>
> >> >> and some of the lost irregularity is reinstated.
>
> >> Anything "lost" in language cannot be reinstated. Lost
> >> irregularities in particular can never be "reinstated",
> >> but can be recreated by analogies and the like (the way
> >> English makes new irregularities with "thunk" "praught"
> >> etc) but as such they bear no necessary relationship to
> >> the original situation.
>
> >> If they are "reinstated" they cannot have been lost.
>
> > Sorry for my imprecise wording. What I meant is that
> > conservative forms survive for special situations in
> > special groups, and from there are reinstated as 'proper'
> > forms.
>
> I don't have anything handy that would give me any details,
> but I know that there were several Middle Dutch dialects and
> that some of them differed considerably. The change that
> you mentioned need be no more than a shift in cultural
> dominance from one of these dialects to another; such shifts
> have certainly occurred. In that case there would be no
> need to invoke 'special situations in special groups'.