Michif

[David L. White]

> Now, whether we regard Michif as a language with two direct ancestors, or as
> a language with no direct ancestors at all, is a matter of taste and
> definition.

        Or as a form of Cree that has borrowed all its nouns and nominal
morphology from French.  Since 1) borrowing of all open class words, and 2)
borrowing of nominal morphology, are both independently attested, the
possibility (actually definition) cannot be excluded.  Such a development of
Cree, critically dependent on another language for the maintanence of mutual
comprehensibility across generations, is clearly of a different sort than
what is usually encountered, but it appears no one at this point is denying
that the same sort of thing has happened in English with Anglo-Romani.  In
other words, all the things it would take to make Michif a form of Cree are
known from other cases.
        By the way, it seems from Mr. Long's use of "theoretically possible"
in indirectly ridiculing my views that he thinks I think that language
mixture is theoretically impossible.  No.  Recall please, Mr. Long and
anyone else who may need to, that my first comment on the subject was
something along the lines of "there may be one out there, I just haven't
seen it yet."  My theoretical musings long ago led me to the conclusion that
mixed languages are possible.   Also, my conclusion that there are no
(non-lexically) mixed finite verbal morphologies was based on observation of
the evidence (such as it is!) in TK, not ratiocination (regardless of
whether Dr. Trask likes the particular ratiocinations that might have led to
that conclusion, if that had been what I was doing).  So Mr. Long has been
fighting phantoms here.  And not paying much attention to what people
actually say.
        In the intervals of dutiful slogging, I am preparing a combination
1) response to Dr. Trask and 2) coherent (hopefully) presentation of my
views.  Responding to individual isolated points tends, I think, to lead to
confusion (not to mention tangents, and tangents of tangents ...) when the
matter in question is of any complexity, which language contact certainly
is.

Dr. David L. White