[tied] Re: Creole Romance?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "m_iacomi" <m_iacomi@...> wrote:

> --- 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".

My answer didn't. It's your terminology, not mine.

> >>> 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.

I think I should know what my points are.

>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.

Yes since some point in time (when?). But the situation would be no
different from that of diglossia, examples being
German/Schwyzerdütsch, Classical/Colloquial Arabic.

> 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.

Exactly my point. Since there's no point in doing it, no one does.
Except in Papua New Guinea, where there is a political point.

>
> >>> (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.

Give it another 50 years without a written language and it would be
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.

As for facts: given that surviving sources are so rare, you wouldn't
get any examples of "bad Romance".

> >> 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.

That's not an argument, that's a definition.

>
> >> 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.

I'm sorry three.

> 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.
>

Examples counter to what?

Torsten