The UPenn IE Tree (a test)

Sean Crist kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu
Thu Sep 2 16:27:56 UTC 1999


On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> 	Why not? Creolization and Pidginization are languages with more
> than one lineal ancestor. There would be no Tok Pisin if it weren't for
> English.

They're totally different processes.  Italian developed from Latin by
regular sound change.  Creoles don't arise by regular sound change.  When
a language becomes creolized, it typically inherits little to none of the
morphology of its contributer languages, and its undergoes a substantial
elaboration in its syntax and phonology, resulting in elements in the
language which cannot be attributed to anything obvious in any of the
contributor languages.

> 	One could argue that the relation between English and Tok Pisin [et
> al.] isn't that different form the relationship between Latin and the
> Romance languages.

Sociolinguistically, yes. Historically, no.  It's true that in both cases,
there's one lect which is used more for scholarly purposes, etc.  (Latin
or English), and another which is used at home and for everyday trade
(Italian or Tok Pisin).

That's a totally separate question from what the historical relationship
is between the languages.  Indeed, you can have essentially the same
sociolinguistic situation where there is no known genetic connection
between the two languages at all (e.g. Spanish and Guarani).

> 	Re mother-daughter languages, it's certainly plausible for dialects
> to change at different rates and for a dialect, due to isolation or
> emmigration, to evolve into another language while the parent language is
> still spoken in the home country [or vice versa if one considers the
> situation of Icelandic vis-a-vis Norwegian Landsmal/Nynorsk].

No language is a "living museum" of some earlier stage of the language.
All dialects innovate over time, even if we admit that some dialects
innovate more rapidly than others.

Let me give a well-worn example here.  There's a widespread misconception
that Appalachian English is a holdover of Elizabethan-era English. It's
quite true that Appalachian English retains some archaisms which were lost
elsewhere, but that's not the end of the story.  There are other dialects
of American English which retain archaisms which were lost in Appalachian
English.  All dialects have innovated; there's no one dialect of American
English which retains the original state of affairs.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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