Genetic Descent/Haitian Creole

[Larry Trask]

--On Saturday, June 23, 2001 4:09 am +0000 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

[quoting himself]

>> Words and morphs are not like biological cells.  Each word or piece of
>> morphology does not contain a hologram of the entire language in its DNA.
>> We cannot clone an entire language out of a single word or verb
>> morphology.  A language is made up of many totally independent parts.
>> Why should the "genetics" of one part affect the "genetics" of another
>> part.

[LT]

> <<This is not the way we use 'genetic' in linguistics.  We do not apply
> the term to individual elements within a language.  We can no more ask
> whether the English word 'pity' is genetic or not than we can ask whether
> it is green and squishy.>>

> Well, that's fine.  And I know a guy who refuses to call his mother "mom".
> But at least he has an explanation for it.

> Is there a more "pithy" answer to why there can only be one genetic
> ancestor than this one?

Steve is taking issue with my fussiness over terminology.  Well, sorry, but
my fussiness is not mere tedious pedantry: I think Steve is trying to blur
a fundamental distinction by introducing misleading terminology of his own
devising.

In linguistics, we use the term 'genetic' in connection with languages and
with the ancestry of languages.  We simply do not apply it to elements
within languages, and doing so is not helpful.

Elements in languages may be labeled 'inherited' or 'borrowed'.  This
distinction is conventionally seen as fundamental, and I want to insist on
the correctness of such a position.  Steve, I gather, wants to blur it, and
perhaps even to abandon it.

The English word 'brother' has been a part of English as long as English
has existed as an identifiable language, and even for longer than that.  It
is inherited.

The English word 'kangaroo' was introduced into English around 1770, after
being taken over from the Australian language Guugu-Yimidhirr.  It is
borrowed.

I take it that Steve wants to draw no distinction between the two cases.
For him, it appears, 'brother' is just one piece of Germanic baggage in
English, while 'kangaroo' is just one piece of Australian baggage, and
there is no difference of principle.  It is merely that the Germanic
baggage -- at present, anyway -- outweighs the Australian baggage.  Is this
right?

But I think there's a huge difference between the stuff that's been in
English from the beginning and the stuff that's entered the language along
the way.  The Norman French influx after the Conquest was so vast that the
French baggage in English probably now outweighs the native Germanic
baggage -- but English is still descended from a Germanic ancestor, not
from a Romance ancestor.  English, like any language, cannot change its
ancestry.

Why do I insist on such doctrinaire pigeonholing?  Why can't I just accept
Steve's enlightened position that all languages have multiple ancestries,
and that making distinctions like mine is a waste of time?

Because I believe firmly that the distinctions are real and important.  The
way that modern English has come into existence is really and fundamentally
different from the way that Michif has come into existence, or Tok Pisin,
or Haitian Creole, or Media Lengua.

In order to understand how these other languages have come into existence,
we must first recognize that there is something fundamentally different
about their origins, compared with "ordinary" languages like English and
Chinese.

If we follow Steve in maintaining that all languages have multiple
ancestors, then we in effect abandon any hope of seeing Michif or Tok Pisin
as anything special, and we thus abandon any hope of understanding the
conditions that led to their creation.  And such an outcome would be a
disaster: we would be closing off a whole avenue of historical
investigation, and moreover an avenue that I would describe as
outstandingly fascinating and important.

Steve wants us to believe that every element present in a language is part
of its genetics, part of its inheritance.  But this view is simply not
helpful: it obscures fundamental distinctions.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)