[tied] Re: Creole Romance? [was: Thracian , summing up]

> >>>>> As time goes, creoles are superseded by still more credible
> >>>>> imitations of the donor.
> [...]
> >> Oh, yes. But that's a different story. Proper English or French
> >> impose themselves not as "imitations" but as normal languages of
> >> culture in their usual correct form. [...]
> >
> > And it's 'different' by your fiat.
>
> No. English and French are living languages. There is no

`imitation`

> of some dead language: it's just English or French. When I speak
> French I don't imitate French language, I just speak French.

I don't see the difference. We all imitate whoever we learned
whatever language from.

>
> >> So you cannot accept that such a transition can spring from a
> >> smooth continous process?!
> >
> > No, I can't accept that a discontinuity can 'spring' from a
> > continuity, this discontinuity being the one we see in the

sources.

>
> You should have understood up by now that there is no linguistical
> discontinuity in time, just the amount of changes being obviously
> too important to be further ignored. The discontinuity is only at
> the perception level. As if you decide to explore some steps of the
> stairs at the groundlevel in a Grand Hotel, and after a while you
> suddenly discover that you're no longer at the ground level but at
> the first floor: there is no big discontinuity between succesive
> steps, making your climbing quasi-continuous, but there is a clear
> discontinuity in conscience when finding out you changed the floor.

Thank you for part two of your lecture on continuity. Question: When
will the Anglophonians make the observation they no longer speak
English and take appropriate action? (Answer: if and when someone or
something forces them to do so politically. The establishment of Tok
Pisin as a state language is a political act. Left alone, Papua would
eventually speak English.)

>
>
> > Let me explain here that I don't have a problem with a continuous
> > development from Latin to a Romance language. But where you at

any

> > given time see e.g. a uniform, mutually completetly intelligible
> > language, I see at any given place and time a range of sociolects

or

> > registers, from (passably) perfect Latin in the monasteries down
> > (sociologically speaking) to creole-like low-register sociolects.
>
> No. There was no continuous range of sociolects. There were two
> idioms, say A and B, in evolution. During Classical Latin stage,
> A is the "good" Latin usage and B is the vernacular Latin. Both
> A and B belong to what is called "Latin" (system). As history
> goes on, A became progressively a dead language as practically
> lesser and lesser people were spoking it as mother tongue, whilst
> B acquired more and more Romance features. Between A and B, during
> this transition period, there was some influence, some constructions
> specifical to B springing out in A texts. That is easy to understand
> since most A writers were also B speakers and they still thought
> A and B were belonging to the same system.
> Evolution of B was obviously faster and *not* due to A writers
> (forming a insignificant minority), but to the large mass of people
> who had no worry about conserving a "good" A. It was a continuous
> process, as well as the somehow slower degradation of A with respect
> to Classical Latin. At some historical point (described in D.N.'s
> pdf), A writers decided (or were told to) to systematize degraded A
> by restoring the Classical Latin A. At this moment, A was already a
> dead idiom for several centuries and the discontinuity in writing
> it doesn't concern directly Romance languages [it has something to
> do with these for some Medieval Latin loanwords and nothing more].
> At some other historical moment, people realized that A and B can
> no longer considered one same language. Since A was constructed as
> Classical Latin, that accounts for acknowledgement that B cannot be
> called Latin; though continuing vernacular Latin from Classical
> period, it was called "rustica romana lingua". That is: B is the
> living language in continuous evolution having given birth to
> Romance languages and the only interesting object in diachrony.
> A is a dead language of interest as source of inspiration, but not
> as idiom with descendents.
>

That is the classical position, yes. I know that. You seem to think I
haven't understood what you are saying.
I repeat, if it were so uniform, why all the hassles over
incomprehensible patois' later?

> > And therefore, when a political decision was made that we need a
> > language for this particular area that happened to be ruled over
> > by one monarch, that language was chosen somewhat down the scale,
> > and therefore contained creole-like features. So there!
>
> What "creole-like" features are you speaking of? Those like partial
> conservation of verbal and nominal systems?! :-)

Yes.

> The language was chosen because was the only living one. The fact
> that choice was made at a definite moment has nothing to do with
> language's continuity over the time and does not imply any fracture
> point in its' evolution.
>

More credo's.

Torsten