English as a creole-like language

[David Robertson]

Good day!

To keep my points very brief, and only react to Henry:

a)  It's easily conceivable that English has undergone the *same*
processes that go on in the origination of contact languages, and not only
*analogous* processes.  The difference may be that English has undergone
the same processes in *different circumstances* from those that obtain
with pidgins, creoles, mixed languages et alia.

b)  Could it be that the very simplification of the grammatical
morphology of English made it possible and likely that English might
borrow heavily from the languages it came into contact with?  I have in
mind the compelling principle, in studies of language contact, that the
more shared, and usually unmarked, features present in languages which are
in contact, the greater the likelihood of borrowing*.  (All things, as Joe
Malone would say, being equal, of course.)  Maybe the loss of obligatory
gender, case and number marking is closely related to the increasing ease
displayed by English in adopting words from outside the Germanic family,
and outside Indo-European even.  This would be just one factor among
several, though.

Best wishes from
Dave

*Think of "lowest common denominators" as the metaphor here:  In north-
west North America, where CJ arose, many features which are highly marked
(meaning, unusual)
among the world's languages are quite common, and were preserved in
Chinook Jargon because they were at least one digit in the lowest common
denominator.  Similarly, we might say that English became capable of
participating in a lower L.C.D. than it once had, by shedding its case
system, for example; case is a fairly marked category, compared to some of
the alternatives.



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