<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 14 October 2009 - Volume 04<br></font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#999999"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a><br>
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)<br>Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</a><br></font>===========================================</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: Brooks, Mark <</font><a href="mailto:mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">><br>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.14 (05) [EN]</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Ron wrote: “So maybe something more than language contacts is at play here.”<br> <br>I expect that power and prestige would play a role. When two languages come in contact with each other, one would likely have a higher or more powerful status. Which one gets the simplification? It looks like the more dominant one would in most cases. For example, the creole language in Haiti has French as the “main contributor” and Western African languages as secondary. I suppose this comes from the fact that French-speakers held the dominant position socially in colonial Haiti, and the imported slaves had to learn to talk to the more powerful French-speakers in French. So, the dominant language underwent a simplification.<br>
<br>Now, with English, I don’t know if the same thing happened or not. It appears a little different. If we assume that the Anglo-Saxon speakers had more power in Southern England (for lack of a better name), then their language underwent simplification. But, if we assume that in the Danelaw that Old Norse had more power, then we would expect it to undergo simplification there. I don’t think that happened, but later events might account for that. Or could we say that Northumbrian and Scots really had Old Norse as the simplified language that they later became?<br>
<br>Mark Brooks</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">----------</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: R. F. Hahn <</font><a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">sassisch@yahoo.com</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">><br>
Subject: Language varieties</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Mark,<br><br>At least in later times under Norman domination over Britain, the Norman language was by far more prestigeous than was English, so much so that many English (and Scottish?) people adopted Norman as their first language and English was perceived as being endangered around the time the Normans left Britain, which meant that some sort of English revival was necessary.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">But it was <em>English</em> that underwent simplification, not Norman.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">In the case of Old Danish and possibly Old Norwegian (not counting Icelandic and Faroese), both they and Old English underwent simplification.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Again, could there have been other factors that we haven't looked at?</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Look at the Eskimo-Aleut languages! Their long-standing contacts with Danish, English, French and Russian seem to have led to no grammatical simplification.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font> </div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Regards,</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Reinhard/Ron</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Seattle, USA<br></font></div>
<p>
==============================END===================================
<p>
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org.
<p>
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
<p>
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
<p>
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")
<p>
are to be sent to listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org or at
<p>
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
<p>
*********************************************************************