LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.16 (03) [E]
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Wed Nov 16 17:29:22 UTC 2005
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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16 November 2005 * Volume 03
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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.14 (05) [E]
Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>I think so, because it's obviously very close to Latin, like the greater
part of the whole German/Dutch/English grammar. The difference to the
Scandinavian languages could result from less Roman influence there.<
Can anyone think of a single example of a language ADOPTING the inflections
of another, having come into contact with it?
I can think of numerous creoles including English that adopted one or other
characteristics of a parent language or , more commonly, threw out both !
Languages influence each other lexically i.e. they borrow words - but
borrow grammar?????????????????????
The origins of the Indo-European lanaguges were first spotted by English
scholars out in India who, when they first encountered Sanskrit writings,
recognised the similiarity between its inflections or patterns of
inflections and those of Ancient Greek.
As Ron says: older grammars were not more simple - in fact they were very
complex and far more rigid - without room for the ambiguities of a
relatively new language such as English.
The move to an invariable form from a variable or inflected form is a
characteristic of English - perhaps in conjunction with our
Danish/Scandinavian forebears?
Heather
----------
From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.15 (02) [E]
Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>First: why did the old *Celtix Languagex* nearly vanish in the Western
European areas and became widely substituted by the so called
'Vulgar-Latin', the ancestor of modern French? Wasn't it because of the
great regional and tribal diversity of their language, similar to the
Germanic conditions? Just an event of rationality, because it was easier to
find a Lingua Franca than to change all their dialects?<
Did they vanish?
When I first visited the Dordogne I was immediately struck
by the use of 'Mas' to denote a smallholding/ small farm. The
Welsh/celtic word for the same is 'maes'
Languages before they vanish completely go underground and become homespun
dialects with maybe ever decreasing circles of use.
If you dig around in French dialects you will find remanants fo the
'vanished' language of the Gauls.
However it is a fact that the occupation of Britain by the Romans must have
been very different from that in France/Gaul - up to the Rhine - because
after the retreat of the Romans, Gaul was left with embryonic French from
Vulgar Latin whereas the Anglo-Saxons met with Celtic when they ventured to
these shores and very little if any Vulgar Latin.
Heather
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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.15 (07) [E]
Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>I had been educated this way (to think Latin to be 'mother of all our
l*a*nguistic capabilities'), but I never dived into the depths.
It's the first time in my life to deal so intensively with this thread, I'm
a complete ignoramus here.<
If you google on 'indo-european' or 'PIE' or 'proto-indo-european' you
will find lots of histories of language that will fill you in.
I found some beauties when I was writing a teaching aid for language
awareness a couple of years ago.
Interesting that you should have been taught that Latin was the mother of
all linguistic capabilities.
I once met a university teacher/lecturer of some reknown who also had been
taught that German adopted its ending after it met the Romans.
Perhaps there is a euro-university conspiracy to deny PIE
??????????
Heather
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Morphology
Hello, dearest Heather of ours, and welcome home! I say this with
double-strength delight because above you say all the "right" things as far
as I am concerned. ;-)
> Can anyone think of a single example of a language ADOPTING the
> inflections of another, having come into contact with it?
>
> I can think of numerous creoles including English that adopted one
> or other characteristics of a parent language or , more commonly,
> threw out both !
>
> Languages influence each other lexically i.e. they borrow words -
> but borrow grammar?????????????????????
During the last twenty years or so there was a claim that a certain (East?)
African language had the lexicon of one language and the grammar of another.
I can't remember the name ... Can anyone else? Ah! Don't bother! It just
came back to me: Ma'a (a.k.a, Mbugu), used in Tanzania. It's grammar is
supposed to be Bantu and its lexicon Cushitic (thus two language families
being involved). Similar claims have been made about Mednyj Aleut, having
an Aleut base and fully incorporated Russian devices, assumedly due to a
stage of complete bilingualism with somewhat more strength on the Aleut
side. Media Lengua is a contact language between Quechua and Spanish, has
predominantly Quechua grammar and phonology but has restructured almost all
stems according to Spanish (Dutch:
http://www.vanoostendorp.nl/interviews/muysken.html). And finally there is
the case of Michif (a.k.a. Mitchif or Metis Creole, used in various parts of
Canada, also in North Dakota), which is supposed to have ... hold on to your
hat! -- Cree lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntax in verb phrases while
noun phrases are governed mostly by French syntax and morphology ...
(http://www.metisresourcecentre.mb.ca/language/)
> Interesting that you should have been taught that Latin was the mother of
> all linguistic capabilities.
>
> I once met a university teacher/lecturer of some reknown who also had been
> taught that German adopted its ending after it met the Romans.
>
> Perhaps there is a euro-university conspiracy to deny PIE
>
> ??????????
I'm afraid so. Our Jonny is quite right. It's the kind of stuff (for want
of a more explicit term) that used to be taught especially in "better"
schools with concentrations in the humanities (= Latin & classics), not only
in Germany but in most of Europe. Latin and Greek were considered *the*
models for "sophisticated" languages. Morphological complexity was seen as
an indication of just such "sophistication." It should therefore not come
as a surprise that "dialects" like Low Saxon (which do not morphologically
distinguish datives and accusatives) were considered all the more inferior,
that Dutch was considered simple and crude in comparison with "High" German,
that Old Norse (and in extension Modern Icelandic and Faeroese) was
considered superior to Modern Scandinavian, etc. Morphological and
syntactic complexity was seen as "separating the men from the boys" in terms
of book learning. This explains also that highly convoluted syntax in
marathon-run sentences used to be cultivated as a fine art particularly in
German academic publications, making them a real pain in the neck to read
and understand and thus keep out the "riffraff."
I once had an (assigned, not chosen) Italian instructor in Australia. He
had been educated in the "classical" way and firmly believed in the
superiority of Roman civilization and the Latin language and in extension
its "foremost" daughter Italian ("the actual Romance language of today").
If this was not enough, he liked to point out supposed indications of
"inferiority" in English and other languages of its ilk, particularly,
however, non-European languages, especially Chinese which "has no grammar
and an underdeveloped script," not to mention the "primitive" languages of
Africa and Australia. You can probably imagine that I had many an
altercation with him and wasn't exactly his favorite, given that this
coincided with the latter half of my _Sturm- und Drangzeit_ and I wasn't
then the mellow, adorable and cuddly person you know me as now ;-) . (He
ended up in a murder-suicide with his secretary, but that's a different
story ... and I swear I had nothing to do with it.)
I understand that similar beliefs used to be held in certain
classics-centered academic circles in Britain. However, access to Indian
languages and the eventual development of the Ind-European theory may have
acted as a counter-balance there, also earlier access to Chinese studies.
So now you know what we're up against. If we were living in a perfect world
we'd have language awareness consultants, lots and lots of them, like you
running all over the place.
> If you google on 'indo-european' or 'PIE' or 'proto-indo-european' you
> will find lots of histories of language that will fill you in.
And there you have opened another can of worms, I'm afraid ... I can *not*
understand why in German this is still called _Indogermanisch_. I would
have hoped that that had bitten the dust along with certain people at the
end of World War II. And why is even *Dutch* still using _Indo-Germaans_?
What's up with that, dude?
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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