Re: [tied] Middle English Plurals

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 06-01-04 15:46, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >> Neither is a creole phenomenon.
> >
> > An authoritative statement.
>
> I just don't want to engage for the nth time in the same dispute

about

> terms. "Creolisation" was a buzz word in ME studies in the 1970s

and

> 80s, after the publications of C.-J. N. Bailey & Karl Maroldt,

Patricia

> Poussa, Jim Milroy, and several other people. The idea that ME was
> creole was soon falsified and refuted, to most people's

satisfaction, by

> others, especially Manfred Görlach and Sarah Thomason & Terence

Kaufman

> (some of their arguments were summarised for you by Brian, I

believe, in

> one of earlier occurrences of this neverending thread). The useful
> effect of the "creolisation" debate is that people have become more
> aware of creole studies and gained a much better understanding of

what a

> creole is and how to recognise one when you see it. You didn't

follow

> the debate, so I wouldn't blame you for obfuscating things that

other

> people have done their best to clarify, but perhaps you ought to do

some

> reading before advancing a hypothesis already advanced thirty years

ago,

> thoroughly discussed and abandoned by most experts in the field. As
> things are, you're reinventing flogiston.
>

You are too kind. As I recall Brian's argument, the difference
between a creole and a proper language was that if enough of the
development stages of a language is known so that we may follow its
development in detail, then it is not a creole, otherwise it is. In
other words the status of a language is determined not by a property
of that language, but by a property of our knowledge of it. This
means that if all documents pertaining to the development of, say,
Middle English were burned, English would overnight become a creole,
whereas if we should happen to find the notes of some misionary to
New Guinea documenting the develpment of Tok Pisin, that language
would overnight cease to be a creole.

> > Followed by a restatement of the traditional position.
> >
>
> "Traditional" doesn't mean incorrect.
>
> > Yes, I know, the development of English was driven by perfectly
> > natural processes, unlike the development of creoles.
>
> It's a silly game. I've never said the development of creoles is

not

> natural. What I said in my previous posting was that there was

nothing

> in the Middle English development that couldn't be due to internal
> factors. Why should the generalisation of <-es> have been due to
> interaction with other languages?

I offer something by way of explanation. You offer nothing of the
kind, except the intervention of an autonomous agent, The Rule, like
a Deus ex machina.

>And what about the (eventually
> abortive) generalisation of <-en> in the South (which was a process

of

> the same nature)? Was it due to interaction witha still different
> language?

No. The South adopted the unpractical <-en> exactly _because_ the
North adopted the practical <-es>; cf the reaction of Caxton's woman.

>You selectively take _some_ features of ME and argue that
> since similar features are found in creole languages, English must
>be a
> creole.

Not really. But if want to be hysterical about it (white folks don't
speak creoles?) I'll restrict my claim, and say that English (and
other IE languages) were developed with processes that are similar to
those that create creoles.

>It's like claiming that since bats have wings, they must be
> birds.

In that case your position is; Birds have wings, birds are not bats,
therefore bats don't have wings.

>Remember the Bulgarian example? Bulgarian must have been
> creolised, since it lacks noun cases, right? But what about its

fully

> preserved conjugational categories and inflections? What about its

three

> genders, etc.? You concentrate on what you think is supportive

evidence,

> and don't even mention the rest.
>

Allright, partial creolisation, then.

> > Obviously the
> > Germans refused to participate in this perfectly natural process

to

> > the point of eventually banishing all -s plurals (apart from
> > Northernisms and Romance loans). What is the matter with these

people?

>

> As I have emphasised many times (check the archives), "natural" is

not

> the same as "deterministic".

"Natural", in your terms, doesn't seem to mean much.

>English followed one possible path, German
> followed another, also a natural one. One reason for the difference

may

> have been that OHG had the other variant of the strong masculine

plural

> ending, <-a> from unextended *-o:z, which was less characteristic

and

> therefore its selective advantage was weaker than that of OE -as,

but

> such developments may simply be due to a kind of random

evolutionary

> drift without a clear motivation.

"Random evolutionary drift"? Perhaps you should run your definition
of terms past Darwin first? Or else, if you persist in your metaphor,
you should offer an explanation of how "survival of the fittest"
enters into your picture of linguistic change. Why was the English
environment conducive to the survival of nom pl -as, and the German
one to acc pl -a?

>/mt/ > /nt/ is a natural assimilation,
> but it _doesn't have to_ happen every time you find /mt/ in a

language.

> A different natural change may occur, e.g. /mt/ > /mpt/, or the

cluster

> may continue to exist unchanged for ages. One never knows in

advance.

By your definition. In my definition, -s is the practical plural,
used by traders who don't give a hoot about grammar and manners, but
only about moving merchandise across the table, -e and all its
complicated relatives are the choice of trade-hating etiquette-loving
hierarchies.


Torsten