LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.14 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 14 October 2009 - Volume 04
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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.14 (05) [EN]

Ron wrote: “So maybe something more than language contacts is at play here.”

I expect that power and prestige would play a role.  When two languages come
in contact with each other, one would likely have a higher or more powerful
status.  Which one gets the simplification?  It looks like the more dominant
one would in most cases.  For example, the creole language in Haiti has
French as the “main contributor” and Western African languages as
secondary.  I suppose this comes from the fact that French-speakers held the
dominant position socially in colonial Haiti, and the imported slaves had to
learn to talk to the more powerful French-speakers in French.  So, the
dominant language underwent a simplification.

Now, with English, I don’t know if the same thing happened or not.  It
appears a little different.  If we assume that the Anglo-Saxon speakers had
more power in Southern England (for lack of a better name), then their
language underwent simplification.  But, if we assume that in the Danelaw
that Old Norse had more power, then we would expect it to undergo
simplification there.  I don’t think that happened, but later events might
account for that.  Or could we say that Northumbrian and Scots really had
Old Norse as the simplified language that they later became?

Mark Brooks

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Mark,

At least in later times under Norman domination over Britain, the Norman
language was by far more prestigeous than was English, so much so that many
English (and Scottish?) people adopted Norman as their first language and
English was perceived as being endangered around the time the Normans left
Britain, which meant that some sort of English revival was necessary.

But it was *English* that underwent simplification, not Norman.

In the case of Old Danish and possibly Old Norwegian (not counting Icelandic
and Faroese), both they and Old English underwent simplification.

Again, could there have been other factors that we haven't looked at?

Look at the Eskimo-Aleut languages! Their long-standing contacts with
Danish, English, French and Russian seem to have led to no grammatical
simplification.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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