LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.13 (04) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 13 October 2009 - Volume 04
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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.13 (03) [EN]

Ron wrote: “While all this is non-Lowlandic, the principles at work are
relevant.”

Have no fear, I’ll bring this around to the lowlands.  Okay, let’s take
English for example.  I presume that it had contact with the Celtic
languages already present in what we now call Britain.  Did the Celtic
languages at the time have a system of noun declensions?  I ask, because Old
English did, I believe.  If they both did, then we would expect them to
influence each other, and possibly retain the case system, right?

Now, I realize that English has a more complicated history than that.  It
had significant contact with Old Norse or Danish which no doubt influenced
it.  In fact, I had a professor who believed that English went thru a
process of creolization with Danish that stripped off much of the case
system and gender system.  Then, he felt that the Norman conquest put it
thru another similar process.

Do y’all have any ideas on that?

Mark Brooks

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Mark,

But Old Danish, an eastern variant of Old Norse, was morphologically far
more complex than is Modern Danish.

Nevertheless, contacts, especially creolization, tends to be a generally
simplifying process, even if all languages involved have complex
morphologies.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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