[tied] Transhumance [Re: etyma for Crãciun]

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

> At 10:16:40 AM on Friday, January 2, 2004, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > In other words, in the Germanic dialects in the old
> > Nordwestblock space, we would expect some people to speak
> > proper Germanic, cases and all, but the remainder to speak
> > a horrible creole, simplified with respect to case, number
> > and person. But, aha, this is just what is the case in the
> > Low German plus Dutch area (and Jutland).
>
> Except that Middle Dutch still had a fair number of case
> distinctions, as may be seen from the paradigm for <die
> dach> 'the day', which closely parallels that of NHG:
>
> Sing. Pl.
> ----- ---
> N die dach die daghe
> G des daghes der daghe
> D dien daghe dien daghen
> A dien dach die daghe
>
> [...]
>
> > Of the people that according to Bede colonised England,
> > the Saxons were a "reconstitued" Nordwestblock people.
> > Jutes, if my interpretation is correct, was a collective
> > designation for Nordwestblock/Jutland people, which leaves
> > the Angli, which were also well out of the way of the
> > Thuringians to begin with. In other words, a good part of
> > those people that occupied England probably didn't speak a
> > proper Germanic, but a creole version.
>
> Except that OE has a pretty extensive declensional system,
> of which a good deal is still found in Southern ME into the
> 13th century (and in Kentish even later).
>

But don't forget that "Middle Dutch" and "OE" are defined by the
contemporary _written_ sources. Logically, nothing prohibits the
assumption of a continuity between the formation of a "Germanic
creole" in the Nordwestblock around the last century BCE and the
first century CE and the appearance of it in written sources some ten-
fifteen centuries later, given the upper-crust provenance of our
sources. If not, why don't the Slavic languages go through a similar
devcelopment?

Torsten