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At 05:15 PM 4/28/2001 -0400, Beverly Flanigan wrote:<br>
<br>
>The first use of the term Lingua Franca (marked now with caps), as I
recall<br>
>from creole studies, was in fact to refer to the mixed trade language
used<br>
>around the Mediterranean area in the first few centuries C.E. and
derived<br>
>mainly from Latin and its already evolving dialects (hence the
Arabs'<br>
>notion that it was the language of the generalized northern or
Frankish<br>
>tribes), mixed considerably with Arabic, Turkish, Greek and other
regional<br>
>tongues.<br>
<br>
<font size=4> The most authoritative study on
Lingua Franca (in creole studies--or historical linguistics for that
matter) is Hugo Schuchardt in an article titled "Die Lingua
Franca" published in 1909 in <font size=4><i>Zeitschrift fur
Romanische Philologie</i><font size=4> 33. A useful translation of
this was published by T. L. Markey in 1979: <font size=4><i>The
Ethnography of Variation: Selected writings on pidgins and
creoles</i><font size=4> [by] Hugo Schuchardt. According to this source
Lingua Franca developed in the Middle Ages from a Romance lexicon out of
contacts between the Romans and Arabs, and subsequently the Turks. <br>
<br>
The use of "Romans" in this context
seems rather inconsistent but Robert Chaudenson (in
<font size=4><i>Creolization of Language and
Culture</i><font size=4>--coming this May at Routledge), who has spent
more time on the question, reveals that the term had been used, by the
Arabs in particular, in reference to people in the Roman Empire. After
the Western part of the Empire collapsed, the term "Frank(ish)"
was often used for its inhabitants, with "rum" often used for
those in the Eastern part of the Empire. <br>
<br>
This is the first time I see Latin vocabulary invoked.
"Romance lexicon" is what I see in Markey's translation of
Schuchardt's article (p. 25). Actually, last weekend I attended a meeting
on the notions "pidgin" and "creole" in London and
one of the papers was on Lingua Franca. The authors (Jacques Arends and
Esther Muusse) focused on Spanish, which Schuchardt identified as the
most influential contributor to LF in the Western Mediterranean.<br>
<br>
<font size=4>Sali.<br>
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<font color="#800000">**********************************************************<br>
Salikoko S.
Mufwene
</font><font color="#800080">s-mufwene@uchicago.edu<br>
</font><font color="#800000">University of
Chicago
</font><font color="#800080">773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924<br>
</font><font color="#800000">Department of Linguistics<br>
1010 East 59th Street<br>
Chicago, IL 60637<br>
</font><font color="#000000"><a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html" eudora="autourl">http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html</a><br>
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