Genetic Descent

[Larry Trask]

--On Monday, May 14, 2001 8:30 am -0500 "David L. White"
<dlwhite at texas.net> wrote:

[LT on Thomason and Kaufman]

>> Hmmm.  May I know where in their book T and K assert that "anything
>> goes"? My reading of the book reveals only the more cautious claim that
>> we cannot know what happens in language contact until we look.

>         Somewhere in the intro.  Hasty perusal has not revealed where.

I'm afraid I still can't find any such statement.

> Do they say anything does not go?

Not that I know of, but it's been years since I read the book.

[A small intervention. I am grateful to Hans-Werner Hatting for his
information on Anglo-Romani, which concludes by observing that Anglo-Romani
is indeed a variety of English.  As it happens, this conclusion is endorsed
by Sarah Thomason in her new book Language Contact: An Introduction,
(Edinburgh UP, 2001).  I'll be citing this book further below.]

[on my example of Takia, which has retained Austronesian morphemes but
borrowed grammatical patterns wholesale from the Papuan language Waskia]

>         It is Austronesian, and not much of a puzzle, except for TK, who
> must try to figure out, without any very clear standard, whether it is 1)
> Austronesian, 2) Papuan, or 3) a new "mixed" language.

First, why is it Austronesian?  By what criterion does the origin of
morphemes wholly outweight the origin of morphological patterns?  Isn't
this rather arbitrary?

Second, why is it incumbent upon T and K to classify Takia, or any
language, in such a rigorous way?  Why aren't they free to decide "none of
the above"?

Anyway, I now want to talk about another language, discussed by Thomason in
her new book.  That language is Laha, spoken in the Moluccas, where the
locally dominant language is a variety of Malay, which is distantly, but
not closely, related to Laha.  The principal investigator here is James T.
Collins:

  J. T. Collins. 1980. 'Laha, a language of the central Moluccas'. Indonesia
  Circle 23: 3-19.

The lexicon of Laha is largely native, though partly borrowed from Malay.
But the grammar is almost 100% Malay, with only a few fragments of native
Laha grammar surviving.  So, my question for David White is this: is Laha a
variety of Malay, or not?  Since the grammar is almost entirely Malay, it
would seem that he must answer "Yes; it's Malay."

But now consider the following.  The Laha are reportedly regarded by
themselves, and by others, as a distinct ethnic group with a distinct
language.  All Laha-speakers are also fluent in Malay, but other speakers
of Malay do not speak Laha.  The conclusion of Collins, and of Thomason, is
that Laha has developed as follows: it started out as a language entirely
distinct from Malay, but, under enormous pressure from Malay, it has
gradually, in piecemeal fashion, absorbed more and more Malay grammar,
until today the grammar is almost entirely Malay, and only a few bits of
Laha grammar survive -- for the moment, since it is possible that these few
fragments will also give way to Malay grammar in the future.

Therefore, using David White's criterion, Laha has changed from being a
language entirely distinct from Malay to a mere variety of Malay.  Is this
reasonable?  Earlier, David rejected a similar scenario for another
language as impossible in principle.

So, the possible conclusions:

(1) The speech variety called 'Laha' has indeed changed from being one
language to being another.

(2) Laha has always been, and remains, a language distinct from Malay, even
though it has imported almost the entirety of Malay grammar.

(3) Collins and Thomason are completely wrong in their interpretation, and
Laha must have had some other origin.

Thomason expressly endorses position (2), as does Collins.  Native speakers
of Laha also take position (2).  Apparently Moluccans who don't speak Laha
also accept position (2).

David, what's your view?

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)