[tied] Re: Creole Romance?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" wrote:

>> Any speaker imitates other speakers. According to your

terminology,

>> nobody really speaks English or French, we all use imitations of
>> them. So in which conditions can one say "I speak English (French)"
>> in opposition to "I speak an imitation of English (French)"? Just
>> to clarify this point.
>
> The former is short for the latter.

If the two formulas are equivalent from your point of view, there is
no opposition between them (incidentally, your terminology is
confusing).
My question contained an essential keyword "opposition".

>>> Question: When will the Anglophonians make the observation they no
>>> longer speak English and take appropriate action?
>>
>> Because nobody really uses Old English for writing texts, there is
>> no need to call nowdays English with another name.
>
> You didn't get my point, which was the discrepancy between the
> _present_ written and spoken English.

That's still a different point. Spoken Medieval Latin was still A
with
slightly local pronunciation idiosyncrasies. By no means could it be
confused with spoken B at the same historical time.
Written English of nowdays belongs obviously to the same diasystem
as spoken English. The discrepancy is _only_ in pronunciation, not in
structure. Therefore there is no point in declaring "written English"
as "English ((c) - T.G. Pedersen)" in opposition with "spoken English"
re-labeled as "Other Language than English". Both written and spoken
forms are English.

>>> (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.)
>>
>> Nope, since spoken English (defining _what_ is to be called
>> English) is still accessible, alive & kickin'.
>
> You missed my point, being that Tok pisin is a case of
> politically 'arrested development'.

I didn't missed your point. It's just totally irrelevant for the
issue
we discuss here. I only pointed out _why_ Tok Pisin (or its' further
evolutionary stages) could _never_ be labeled as English.

>>> I repeat, if it were so uniform, why all the hassles over
>>> incomprehensible patois' later?
>>
>> That's about diatopics not diachrony, as Brian already pointed

out.

>> Variation in space, not in time, as I already hinted. I discussed
>> above the diachronical evolution of A and B because we were talking
>> about (d/dt). You still confuse that with (d/dx).
>
> Yes, but the existence of people who spoke no Latin several hundred
> years after Caesar's conquest implies there must have

very-bad-Latin-

> speakers, bad-Latin-speakers, almost-OK-Latin-speakers too.

Why? There were no longer any native Latin speakers during Middle
Ages,
the ones who still spoke it were learning it as second, third
language;
hence they're not so interesting for linguistic evolution. You seem to
infer that there were a lot of intermediate speakers from A to B, at a
given time during Middle Ages, in a given place. That is not supported
by any facts and by any logic.

>> The geographical variation,
>
> At what time after the fall of Rome did that geography begin to

vary?

If you'd bothered to read all the phrase, you'd have seen what I mean
by "geographical variation" which you seem to confuse with "variation
of geography". Geography is responsible for favoring the establishment
of different convergence areas. As long as the central power is strong
enough, the partitioning is overshadowed by canonical importance of
the
center, that is Rome, Latium and Italy; the favoring has no important
consequence. When central power collapses, centrifugal evolution of
different convergence areas within the ex-empire is no longer
obstructed
by any authority, so latent tendencies become actual drift factors.

>>>> What "creole-like" features are you speaking of? Those like
>>>> partial conservation of verbal and nominal systems?! :-)
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>
>> Those are *not* "creole-like" features, I thought my smiley was
>> clear enough. In fact, they show we can't speak about creolization.
>
> If I put two smileys, does that mean I'm right instead? I can make
> them clear if you want that?

Well, my smiley was intended as softly ironical: conservation -- even
partial -- of verbal and nominal systems rules out creolization. I
have
to recognize that I didn't expected you to say "yes" to this argument.

>> No, these are facts. Not even arguments. Your judgement follows
>> the pattern:
>> 1. {at some moment t0, A & B are (in some sense) the same}
>> 2. {at some moment t1, some authority decides B =/= A}
>> => [your contribution]
>> 3. {there is discontinuity in B (with respect to A) at t1]
>> That's simply bad reasoning. You force out a non-necessary
>> conclusion.
>
> I am sorry to hear that by bad reasoning I have forced out an
> unnecessary conclusion.

I'm sorry too.
In general, showing some counterexamples (as I did in my previous
posts)
should have been enough to make you get rid of {{1 & 2} => 3}
judgement.

Cheers,
Marius Iacomi