Re: American as creolish [was] Re: Baltic Is Gothic

From: Douglas G. Kilday (fufluns_at_chorus.net)
Date: 06/11/04 

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 01:51:03 -0000

"Marko Rauhamaa" <marko@pacujo.net> wrote ...
> "John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com>:
>
> > I favour the direct transition
> >
> > "Have you got X?">"You got X?">"Ya got X?">"Dja got X?",
>
> Maybe. Based on the observation of my children and their friends, I
> think most language evolution originates in small children's
> simplifications and misunderstandings. I would therefore guess that the
> origin of "Dja got X" is in the misunderstanding that "got" is a verb on
> its own right.
>
> So one says
>
> - I got two Rescue Hero toys. (< I've got two rescue hero toys.)
>
> - How many Rescue Hero toys do *you* got, Christopher?

Adults were using <got> as a "verb on its own right" in printed matter six
or seven decades ago. Among the memorabilia from my grandfather's gas
station was a sheaf of oil-company letterhead with the slogan "I got live
power." As an adolescent I commonly heard and used utterances of the
structure "How many ... do you got?" Someone said "Don't knock what you
don't got." I pointed out "If you don't knock what you don't got, you gotta
knock what you *do* got," i.e. condemn your own attributes. This is not
"misunderstanding." All communicants understood each other. Of course,
*writing* this way incurs the ire of prescriptive schoolteachers.

Otto Jespersen made a big deal out of the purported impact of children's
simplifications and generalizations on linguistic change and neglected to
explain why language was not already simplified into the ground millennia
ago, since hundreds of generations of children have been teething on it.
This theory of massive impact of children on language has joined phlogiston
and vitalism in the dustbin. One might as well argue that most geological
change results from erosion. We all stand on dry land, do we not?

Relevant Pages

  • Re: American as creolish [was] Re: Baltic Is Gothic
    ... >> simplifications and generalizations on linguistic change and neglected ... >> This theory of massive impact of children on language has joined ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: American as creolish [was] Re: Baltic Is Gothic
    ... > simplifications and generalizations on linguistic change and neglected to ... > explain why language was not already simplified into the ground millennia ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Petition to UN on Abolishment of Traditional Chinese in 2008
    ... they are armed for the rest of the Chinese writing world they encounter. ... If you study the lists of simplifications, only a small set of around 350 ... give rise to around 1700 plus simplified characters. ... who reform a language are in love with language, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: "The cheques in the post" and other excuses
    ... The language is 'English'. ... Atlantic Ocean that claims to speak English but hasn't in fact done so ... Ok, but don't knock 'em for it, just as the guys in Lisbon don't knock ... American pronounciations or words are used. ...
    (uk.legal)
  • Re: India free education bill tabled
    ... "pan" mhanje but in English. ... some very vital simplifications that Gujarati language has ... is one such - there are newer and newer words getting into the language ... Indians making Indlish ) quite unique and often ...
    (soc.culture.indian)
Loading