LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.22 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 22 July 2009 - Volume 01
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From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.21 (03) [EN]

On Wednesday 22 July 2009 11:32, Lowlands-L List wrote:
 <snip>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
 > Subject: Morphology
>
> Hi, Mark!
>
<snip>
> Mark, two or more speaker communities tend to participate in the
> development of contact languages, pidgins at the first stage and creoles
at
> the second stage. It is not as though the result is features of all native
> languages packed into one new language. We are talking about complex
> processes in which numerous factors and conditions play a role, not least
> being the relative social states of the participants. Typically, the
> lexicon of the socially dominant language is used and the grammar tends to
> be simplified, simpler than the grammars of any of the participating
> languages.

That is definitely the case with Tok Pisin.
>
> Afrikaans is not a really creole, but many people think that it has some
> creole features, which is why some call it a "half creole" or
> "semi-creole". It is far closer to Dutch (including non-standard Dutch
> varieties) than it would be were it a true creole. Consider Petjoh
(Pecok),
> which is simplified Malay with strong Dutch lexical influences, aside from
> influences from French, Javanese, Sundanese, Chinese, etc. The base is
> Malay; it has no basic Dutch grammatical features.

Which is why I consider the nearest analogy to be Old English after the Old
Norse speakers descended in force and settled in quite a large proportion of
the English countryside, and before the influx of the Norman French
speakers.
One of the linguistic issues I raised with my original post on this matter,
was stress - knowing that there were a large number of Saxon and Frisian
speakers in the original Cape settlements, the question that comes to my
mind, is what are the stress patterns in the three languages, and how
different are they?

One way of appreciating the differences in stress patterns in Old English
versus Old Norse, is to look at the poetry:
Old English:
Hwær cwom mearg, hwær cwom mago?  Hwær cwom maÞÞumgyfa?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu?  Hwær sindon seledreamas?
The Wanderer

Old Norse:
Þrymr kvað:
Hvat er með asum?  Hvat er með alfum?
Hvi er-tu einn kominn  i Jotunheima?
Þrymskiða

If poetry is an adequate reflection of the stress patterns of speech, then
you
have a relaxed stress pattern face-to-face with a terse one.  Something had
to give, and I suspect it was the various inflections that people felt
unnecessary.
>
> Afrikaans has undergone considerable morphological simplification but is
to
> a large degree understandable to speakers of Dutch, at least in writing.
> Aside from that it shows signs of influences from various other languages,
> mostly of lexical nature.

An old Dutch man I knew a while back, told me he could understand Afrikaans.
>
> Most Malay lexical loans in Afrikaans -- denoting specific items
previously
> unknown to Europeans -- are said to be not Cape-specific but to have
> already been adopted in overseas Dutch varieties prior to the Cape
> settlement. But there are in Afrikaans "little" things like *baie* from
> Malay
> *banyak*(pronounced [baˈɲak̚] 'much', 'very'). Furthermore, Afrikaans
> adjectival and
> adverbial reduplication (i.e. *gou-gou* 'very quickly/soon') is rather
> similar to that in Malay whose reduplication system is much more
elaborate,
> however.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron
> Seattle, USA
>
<snip>

--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Are couch potatoes good to eat?
A nose by any other name would smell as sweet. (By Bacon under the pseudonym
of Shakespeare)
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.

----------

From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
 Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.21 (01) [EN]

If I may butt in here - what sort of similarities are there between
(Southern)
 English, Northumbrian and Scottish?

We know that during the Old English period, the English kingdoms's influence
stayed pretty much south of the border, so whatever political effect English
has had on Scottish, it would not have been important during the Danelagh
days.

The morphological changes in common are then the result of the Old Norse
speakers on the Old English/Old Scottish speakers on both sides of the
border - and if I remember my Scottish history correctly, the Norwegians
were
responsible for the Norse influences on Scotland, while it was mostly the
Danes responsible for the Norse influences on England.

Just my 0.02c worth - and as usual, don't spend it all at once!

Wesley Parish

On Wednesday 22 July 2009 02:01, Lowlands-L List wrote:
<snip>
>
> From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
 > Subject: LL-L "Idiomatica" 2009.07.20 (04) [EN]
>
> The vast majority of English speakers couldn't read or write at all, and
> knew little or no Latin (or French); conversely, many of those who could
> write didn't use much English, if any.  I doubt therefore that the loss of
> inflections in the Middle English period had much to do with written
Latin.
>
> A more likely explanation I've read was that Old Norse/Danish and Old
> Enlish were pretty similar in terms of the root words, but had markedly
> different inflected endings.  So if they spoke to each other in simplified
> root-word form, understanding was a lot easier without the endings to
muddy
> the waters.
>
> It is very likely that by the time of the Norman Conquest, inflections
were
> already well on their way out in the spoken language; their retention in
> the written Wessex standard form was very likely already an anachronism.
>
> Paul
> Derby
> England
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
 > Subject: Morphology
>
> Thanks, Paul.
>
> It's an interesting hunch worth further investigation.
>
> As you may remember, I'm a believer in the theory that spoken language
> tended to change well before the corresponding written language when very
> few people were literate. In such cases, scribes' errors might be
> indications, and I wonder if anyone has ever noticed those in the Old
> English of the Scandinavian period.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron
> Seattle, USA

--
 Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Are couch potatoes good to eat?
A nose by any other name would smell as sweet. (By Bacon under the pseudonym
of Shakespeare)
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.

•

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