[Lingtyp] the platypus of languages

[Peter Bakker]

Michif is the real platypus....


Michif is, roughly, a language with French nouns and Cree (Algonquian) verbs. In my 1997 book on the genesis of the language, I wrote (p.280):


"Michif is a unique language in many respects. It is unclassifiable genetically and

therefore comparable with the duck-billed platypus or the panda in biology. Does it

belong to the Algonquian or to the Indo-European (Romance) language family? Even

as a mixed language it is unique. With its verb-noun dichotomy it looks completely

different from the other mixed languages of the world."


Bakker, Peter. 1997. "A Language of our Own". The Genesis of Michif - the Mixed Cree-French language of the Canadian Métis. New York: Oxford University Press.




________________________________
Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> på vegne af Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
Sendt: 15. juli 2019 23:15:06
Til: Linguistic Linguistic Typology
Emne: [Lingtyp] Fwd: the platypus of languages



Begin forwarded message:

From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU<mailto:zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>>
Subject: Re: the platypus of languages
Date: July 15, 2019 at 2:12:58 PM PDT
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>>

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<mailto: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

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