lazit', English, standards, and still no opera

[colkitto]

> >actually, regarding "lazit'," the 4-volume dictionary of Russian (ed. by
>>Evgenieva) doesn't list the verb "zalazit'," it lists only "zalezt'" with
>>imperfective "zalezat'" and no problems in conjugation with either.
>
> I did not say "zalazit'" exists, only that the pattern is broken with the
> prefix za-.
>
> Lazit' is a tretorous word. Case in point (and I probably griped about
> this
> before): Muravyova, the author of a book on verbs of motion in a chart of
> conjugation at the end for the verb lazit' gives imperatives "lazaj,
> lazajte" (which are for "lazat'" and she should have given "laz',
> laz'te").
> The earliest edition I own is the third (1978), and the latest is 8th
> (2001). It's still there. How many editors and proof-readers looked at it
> and no one noticed. If only the book editors stopped pushing this verb
> (lazit') on innocent foreigners and stuck to the easier and common -
> lazat'.
>
I don't know how many other non-native Russians on the list have found this,
and maybe I'm revealing a serious gap in my own knowledge, but lazat'/lazit' 
/lezt'/ doesn't actually seem to be that common a verb.
>
> I am not sure what "loose" means in this context. But I think it is
> linguistically proven that the migrating group retains the older variety
> of
> language.

not necessarily.  In any case, every time the word "archaic" is used in 
linguistics, the
definitions have to be made very clear, as any system as complex as any 
human language can be "shown" to be "more archaic" than another on the basis 
of one feature cf.  English being the sole (with the possible exception of 
Sorbian, and some other arguable examples) to preserve Indo-European "w" as 
"w")

>  Thus Icelandic is Old Norse (of about 12th century, I believe),

in some ways Icelandic is less archaic than Continental Scandinavian.
Swedish and Norwegian preserve tones and high front rounded vowels, both 
lost by Icelandic

another example of this phenomenon is that Irish is more archaic in 
morphology, and Scottish Gaelic (an emigrant/immigrant language on one 
level) is more archaic in phonology.

within Slavic, Russian is mostly more archaic than Bulgarian and Macedonian 
in nominal morphology, and mostly less so in verbal morphology.  Russian may 
be seen as 'more archaic' than Polish with regard to certain syntactic 
constructions and lexical items, whereas from the point of view of the 
evolution of gender Polish may be said to be more archaic in some respects 
than Russian.

etc. etc. etc.

> Ladino is Spanish of circa 1492, and American English, particularly that
> spoken on some islands off Carolina's coast is English of 17th century
> variety.

it can be related to dialects in South-Western England.  This sort of 
approach was criticised by  (I think) Lehr-Splawinski, who, in discussing 
the phenomenon of overzealous attempts to see Lithuanian as a sort of living 
Common Slavic, pointed out that it denies Lithuanian (or American English in 
this case) its own history.

 So American English is much closer to Shakespearian English than
> Queen's English is (if you believe this theory of course).

actually, New England English can be traced back to East Anglia, and 
Virginia/Carolina to the South-West.  There's an excellent work on this, 
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's SeedFour British Folkways in America, whcih 
illustrates this (history, not linguistics).

> This is an interesting situation, known in linguistics as code-switching.
> Evidently, Humpty-Dumpty knew both languages or dialects, his own and the
> one Alice would understand. While code-switching has been studied in many
> immigrant groups, Hispanics in America, Nisei (Japanese-Americans) and
> others, anecdotally it's found in fiction like "To Kill a Mockingbird"
> where the black housekeeper speaks "standard American English" with the
> family of Atticus Finch and switches to Black English in her church (to
> the
> great surprise of the narrator-protagonist Scout).

It's also found in Dorothy Sayers' "Five Red Herrings"

quoting from memory

"Gowan was double-tongued.  He spoke Scots to the locals and English to Lord
Peter"

Louis St. Laurent is reported to have said
I didn't know there was English and French.  I just thought there was one 
way of talking to my mother and another way of talking to my father."

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