English as a creole

[Brian M. Scott]

>>  The inversion after an
>> initial adverb or phrase still appears in Elizabethan English and
>> the King James Bible.

> The texts you are referring to are 'high' style, probably voluntarily
> archaicizing (Lawyers still do it : 'What say you?').  Do we know how the
> ordinary people were (already) speaking in the 16-17th century?

Queen Elizabeth I uses 'for that I se not' in a letter that
seems unlikely to represent an archaic style:

	I haue, right deare brother, receaued your
	frendly and affectionat letters, in wiche
	I perceaue the mastar Grayes halfe, limping
	limping answer, wiche is lame in thes respectz:
	the one, for that I se not that he told you
	who bade him talke with Morgan of the price
	of my bloude, wiche he knowes, I am assured,
	right wel; nor yet hathe named the man that
	shuld be the murtherar of my life.

[_Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI of Scotland
(1582-90)_, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, 46, 1849), pp.12-13,
as quoted in Martyn Wakelin, _The Archaeology of English_,
Barnes & Noble, 1988, pp.111-2.]

_The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of
London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D.1563_, ed. John Gough Nichols
(Camden Society I, 42, 1848), offers even less formal writing.
On p.2: 'The xxx day of November was bered Crystoffer Machyn,
Marchand-tayllor'; 'The xiiij day of Feybruarii was dysposyd
of ys bysshoppr[icke] of Wynchestur, the old bysshope M.
Stevyn Gardener, and cared in to the Towre ...'.  P.6: 'The
v day of Juin cam to Clessay the yerle of Shrusbery with
xij^xx hors, ...'.  (The caret indicates a superscript.)
P.7: 'The vij day of July begane a nuw swet in London, and
... ded my lord Crumwell in Leseter-shyre'.  (Here 'ded' is
'died', not 'dead'.)

Such inversions are also to be found occasionally in the
late 16th c. _Gerard's Herbal_, a very plain and straight-
forward piece of writing.

Brian M. Scott