Re: Existence of PIE

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

>
> On 2008-01-27 15:57, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >> They remain IE, because their continuous development from PGmc.
> >> is demonstrable,
> >
> > So is the development of Afrikaans from Dutch.
>
> That's why Afrikaans _is_ "pukka Germanic", to quote Richard.

I am still waiting for an explanation of that term.

> > That can't be relevant.
> > Demonstrability of development is a property of the documentation,
> > not of the languages involved. It's like saying that if you watch
> > paint dry or potatoes boil, it/they won't. I don't think
> > Heisenberg applies in this particular case.
>
> If you want to classify languages on a genetic basis you have to
> assume that development is demonstrable on the basis of their
> properties.

I don't get that sentence. Please explain.

> There is no documentation for anything between PIE and PGmc.
> (including both), but the continuity of the development from PIE to
> Modern English or Afrikaans can be demonstrated nevertheless.

But not from English to Tok Pisin, or what are you saying?

> We know what a creole language looks like and what kind of
> structural replacement can't be due to continuous change.

Please elaborate.

> >> and IE is not a typological grouping.
> >
> > A-hm. Do you recognize this quote:
> > "TP grammar is too obviously non-IE"
> > ?
>
> What I mean is, its syntax and morphology are non-inherited.
> Crucially, it preserves no archaisms, no "junk DNA", so to speak.
> It's _all_ new structure, not just _some_ of it.

So the use of -pela quantifiers and -im transitive verbs is all new,
not substrate-induced?

> >> Then, they all have preserved things a true contact language is
> >> likely to lose (e.g. a simple preterite
> >
> > I thought 'simple' (ie. unitary) was a characteristic of creoles?

> No. Creoles typically have analytic tenses only and no allomorphy
> whatsoever, at least initially. The <sing/sang/sung> alternation
> evidently goes back all the way to PIE

I just argued that it didn't. Do you want to counter my proposals or
will you pretend they didn't happen?

> and is a typical case of a structure that would have been erased in
> the process of creolisation.

Why has it become generalized instead, then?

> Its functionality in Mod.E is questionable. The pattern is just a
> cultural replicator which has managed to survive because of its
> frequent occurrence.

Erh, cultural replicator?

> New speakers of English would probably be
> happier with <sing-ed>, but <sang> is too frequent to be ousted
> easily.

In English, presumably yes. In other Germanic languages the advantage
of the (3.sg.) strong preterite is that it's monosyllabic vs. the two
or three syllables of the weak preterite. Even in English you get
occasional neo-strong preterites like snuck (vs. sneaked).

> > Semitic-speakers present near the Germanic Urheimat may have
> > perceived the adaptation of that IE dialect to the Semitic system
> > of vowel alternation as a simplification?
>
> What we see in contact languages is not "let's use their allomorphic
> variation to express some familiar function" but rather "damn all
> those tricky complications, let's begin from scratch".

What I'll object to here is your universalistic view of what 'scratch'
is. Different scratches for different folks.

> >> their derivational morphology is still complex;
> >
> > ?? Example?
>
> Eng. leng-th, ring-ed, wood-en, ston-y, care-less, care-less-ly,
> care-less-ness, un-know-n -- you get the idea. The morphological
> complexity of Middle English allowed it to absorb a Latinate
> derivational layer, but the foundation is still recognisably
> Germanic and in some cases IE.

If you want derivational complexity, look at the Germanically
untypical example of German: these suffixes are used with those roots
and never elsewhere. German is taught with long lists of words that
take certain suffixes in certain situations, but nowhere else; English
never is. This corresponds to the ways those languages are built: In
German complexity is revered, in English it is shunned.

> >> there are no signs of a radical simplification of their phonology
> >> (another hallmark of pidginisation).
> >
> > Not simplification; adjustment to the phonetic inventory of the
> > substrate.
>
> No. The phonological system of a creole is normally much simpler
> than both. The phonological systems of the (quite a few) languages
> which can be regarded as "substratal" in this case are at least in
> some respects more complex than that of TP. For example, Kuanua has
> six pairs of vowel phonemes (long : short), while TP has only five
> vowels and no phonological length contrasts.

Quite a few etc. In other words, that is not a defining characteristic
of creoles.

> > English has a three-way distinction in stops/continuants: b/p/f
> > etc. Many languages only have two. Compare with Indian English,
> > which has managed to accommodate the English system within its own
> > by means of substitutions. I don't think Tok Pisin qualifies as a
> > master pattern of what a creole necessarily must look like in this
> > respect.
>
> With sixteen consonantal and five vowel phonemes the inventory is
> approximately half the size of that found in any ordinary dialect of
> English.
> It isn't a decisive criterion in itself, but it has its weight in
> combination with the rest.


> Tok Pisin has ALL the features of a typical creole.

Tok Pisin is an English-based creole which is said to encompass all
the features of a creole.


Torsten