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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">Michif is the real platypus....</p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">Michif is, roughly, a language with French nouns and Cree (Algonquian) verbs. In my 1997 book on the genesis of the language, I wrote (p.280):</p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">"</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">Michif is a unique language in many respects. It is unclassifiable
genetically and</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">therefore comparable with the duck-billed platypus or the panda in biology. Does it</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">belong to the Algonquian or to the Indo-European (Romance) language family? Even</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">as a mixed language it is unique. With its verb-noun dichotomy it looks completely</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">different from the other mixed languages of the world."</span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif;">Bakker, Peter. 1997. <i>"A Language of our Own". The Genesis of Michif - the Mixed Cree-French language of the Canadian Métis</i>. New York: Oxford University Press. </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: medium;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>Fra:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> pĺ vegne af Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky@stanford.edu><br>
<b>Sendt:</b> 15. juli 2019 23:15:06<br>
<b>Til:</b> Linguistic Linguistic Typology<br>
<b>Emne:</b> [Lingtyp] Fwd: the platypus of languages</font>
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<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Begin forwarded message:</div>
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<span class="" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0)"><b class="">From: </b></span><span class="" style="">"Arnold M. Zwicky" <<a href="mailto:zwicky@STANFORD.EDU" class="">zwicky@STANFORD.EDU</a>><br class="">
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<span class="" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0)"><b class="">Subject: </b></span><span class="" style=""><b class="">Re: the platypus of languages</b><br class="">
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<span class="" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0)"><b class="">Date: </b></span><span class="" style="">July 15, 2019 at 2:12:58 PM PDT<br class="">
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<span class="" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0)"><b class="">To: </b></span><span class="" style=""><a href="mailto:ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU" class="">ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU</a><br class="">
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<span class="" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0)"><b class="">Reply-To: </b></span><span class="" style="">American Dialect Society <<a href="mailto:ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU" class="">ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU</a>><br class="">
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<div class="">i know that it's annoying to repeat a requestion for information, but my experience is now that (for one reason or another) many people don't notice the first postings, so that it's only when i say i'm giving up my search that material starts
pouring in. (it's also true that i've been advised not to post requests on weekends -- and *never* on US holiday weekends -- because they'll go unnoticed.)
<br class="">
<br class="">
on this topic, there seem to be two largely separate platypodal matters: one lexical, one morphosyntactic. i *think* the original query concerned English as a language with two strata of vocabulary (the writers seem to think this makes English extraordinary,
but in fact such languages are as common as sand). on the second, i *think* the reference is to wave rather than tree models of language relationships. but these are guesses; i haven't been able to consult any of the sources.<br class="">
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i'm forwarding these exchanges to the language typology mailing list.<br class="">
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<blockquote type="cite" class="">On Jul 15, 2019, at 5:32 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <<a href="mailto:adsgarsonotoole@GMAIL.COM" class="">adsgarsonotoole@GMAIL.COM</a>> wrote:<br class="">
<br class="">
Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:<br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">a friend quotes this to me on Facebook:<br class="">
French was the swan, German the beaver, and thus English is the platypus of languages.<br class="">
new to me. i did find<br class="">
<a href="https://www.nerdonomy.com/the-platypus-of-languages/" class="">https://www.nerdonomy.com/the-platypus-of-languages/</a><br class="">
the Nerdonomy site, with a podcast "The Platypus of Languages" (not dated)<br class="">
this has probably been investigated here, but in case not...<br class="">
</blockquote>
<br class="">
Here is a different match for the same figure of speech.<br class="">
<br class="">
Year: 2010<br class="">
Book: The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in<br class="">
Textual Studies<br class="">
Author: David C. Greetham<br class="">
Quote Page 159<br class="">
Publisher: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana<br class="">
<br class="">
[Begin excerpt]<br class="">
Germanic is, in stemmatic terms, unmappable with any consistency,<br class="">
since different features would place it in different positions: it is<br class="">
the duck-billed platypus of languages.<br class="">
[End excerpt]<br class="">
<br class="">
Garson<br class="">
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The American Dialect Society - <a href="http://www.americandialect.org" class="">
http://www.americandialect.org</a><br class="">
</blockquote>
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The American Dialect Society - <a href="http://www.americandialect.org" class="">
http://www.americandialect.org</a><br class="">
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