[Ads-l] the platypus of languages

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

 i know that it's annoying to repeat a requestion for information, but my experience is now that (for one reason or another) many people don't notice the first postings, so that it's only when i say i'm giving up my search that material starts pouring in. (it's also true that i've been advised not to post requests on weekends -- and *never* on US holiday weekends -- because they'll go unnoticed.) 

on this topic, there seem to be two largely separate platypodal matters: one lexical, one morphosyntactic.  i *think* the original query concerned English as a language with two strata of vocabulary (the writers seem to think this makes English extraordinary, but in fact such languages are as common as sand). on the second, i *think* the reference is to wave rather than tree models of language relationships. but these are guesses; i haven't been able to consult any of the sources.

i'm forwarding these exchanges to the language typology mailing list.

> On Jul 15, 2019, at 5:32 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>> a friend quotes this to me on Facebook:
>>  French was the swan, German the beaver, and thus English is the platypus of languages.
>> new to me.  i did find
>>  https://www.nerdonomy.com/the-platypus-of-languages/
>>  the Nerdonomy site, with a podcast "The Platypus of Languages" (not dated)
>> this has probably been investigated here, but in case not...
> 
> Here is a different match for the same figure of speech.
> 
> Year: 2010
> Book: The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in
> Textual Studies
> Author: David C. Greetham
> Quote Page 159
> Publisher: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Germanic is, in stemmatic terms, unmappable with any consistency,
> since different features would place it in different positions: it is
> the duck-billed platypus of languages.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Garson
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org