LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.19 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 19 October 2009 - Volume 01
lowlands at lowlands-l.net - http://lowlands-l.net/
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
===========================================

From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.18 (03) [EN]

 Hello,

 From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be
>

 What about Icelandic v/ Old Norse?
> Regards,
> Roger
>
There has been some linguistic evolution in Icelandic, mainly in the vowel
system. There have also been several syntactic changes, so I don't think
Icelandic is quite as conservative as it appears when you see a page of noun
and verb paradigms.  The main Old Norse saga literature dates to the 13th to
14th centuries, and is rather 'Middle' in date for an 'Old' language, which
makes Old Norse itself seem rather conservative with respect to Primitive
Norse.

Paul Tatum.

----------

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

Furthermore, Icelandic is and was by no means isolated. It was a Danish and
Norwegian colony for centuries and had Danish imposed in formal education
(the same as on the Faeroe Islands), which probably affected the language at
least indirectly. Aside from that, there were contacts with foreign
fishermen and pirates, even pirates from North Africa.

Also, you could argue that purist language planning has been keeping
Standard Icelandic artificially conservative.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.18 (03) [EN]

> From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
 > Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"

> If an elephant gets narrowed down to its trunk ("pars pro toto"), how
> do you distinguish between the trunk of an elephant and the trunk of a
> mammoth in sign language?

Luc,

Very much as synecdoche is used in any language: either the usual usage
is understood by other speakers and less usual usages will have to be
implied by context (grammatical or narrative) or a qualifier will have
to be used.

So a signer can resort to the classifier system again, or use other
available lexical qualifiers, or (showing less skill in the language),
fingerspell "mammoth" or "elephant".

It does seem to be a feature of sign languages these days that borrowing
from a mutually-understood oral language via fingerspelling can
substitute for making use of the resources of the sign language. It just
depends on how much active vocabulary the signer has, and how skilled he
is with the classifier system.

Being able to make really good use of the classifier system can single
out an individual as particularly erudite, not everybody takes it to the
highest level.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

==============================END===================================

 * Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.

 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.

 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.

 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")

   are to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at

   http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.

*********************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20091019/c66e7eed/attachment.htm>