Re: Learning a language
From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 06/11/04
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Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:34:25 GMT
Eugene Holman wrote:
>
> In article <40C99DB0.3F41@worldnet.att.net>, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > Eugene Holman wrote:
> > >
> > > In article <40C92D01.3FFC@worldnet.att.net>, "Peter T. Daniels"
> > > <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > >
> <deletions>
> > >
> > > By definition a creole is a perfectly normal language with native
> > > speakers. Being a creole is the *consequence* of the elaboration and
> > > acqisition of a body of native speakers of an earlier jargon or pidgin
> > > which had arisen from contact between speakers of different languages.
> > >
> > > Indonesian arose from a transplantation of Malay to a specific locality,
> > > after which it was strongly modified due to its rapidly becoming the
> > > language of people who spoke a different, highly divergent languages, such
> > > as Dutch, Javananese, English, and Pidgin English. The result was
> > > something that looks like a streamlined version of Malay, with
> > > regularization or loss of some of the more quirky grammatical details of
> > > classical Malay and radically different strategies for augmenting
> > > vocabulary.
> > >
> > > Although I would agree with you that Indonesian is not a creole, I would
> > > argue that many, perhaps most, of the features differentiating it from
> > > Malay are consequences of a period in its recent history when it a
> > > rapidly acquired a large body of second-language speakers, and their
> > > non-native patterns of usage acquired enough prestige to function as a
> > > major input into the process of elaborating further, alternative norms
> > > (understood in a loose sense as the consistent patterns of spoken and
> > > written usage in characterizing various registers). The notion creoloid
> > > input would be useful here, as it is when studying the evolution of
> > > Afrikaans.
> > >
> > > What, in your opinion, qualifies as a genuine creole? What term do you use
> > > to refer to the non-native mixed varieties of a language that arise
> > > consequent to language contact and the urgent need to learn and elaborate
> > > rough and ready vernacular mixtures of two or more languages?
> >
> > PLEASE get a dictionary of linguistics. I'd suggest either those by
> > Larry Trask or those by David Crystal.
>
> David Crystal: *Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics*, 4th edition,
> 1997, Blackwell: Oxford, pg. 99:
>
> <quote>
> *creole (creolize, de-creoliz-ation)* A term used in SOCIOLINGUISTICS to
> refer to a PIDGIN LANGUAGE which has become the mother-tongue of a SPEECH
> community, as is the case in Jamaica, Haiti, Dominica, and several other
> ex-colonial parts of the world. The process of *creolization* expands the
> STRUCTURAL and STYLISTIC range of the pidginized language, such that the
> *creolized language* becomes comparable in FORMAL and FUNCTIONAL
> COMPLEXITY to other languages. A process of *decreolization* takes place
> when the STANDARD language begins to exert influence on the creole, and a
> POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM emerges.
> </quote>
>
> John Holm: *An introduction to pidgins and creoles*, 2001, Cambridge
> University Press, Cambridge, pg. 10:
>
> <quote>
> However, others say that these particular varieties are rather the
> products of *semi-creolization*, which occurs when people with different
> first languages shift to a typologically distinct target language (itself
> an amalgam of different dialects in contact, including fully restructured
> varieties) under social circumstances that partially restrict their access
> to the target language as normally used by native speakers. The processes
> that produce a semi-creole include *dialect levelling* (see
> *koineization*) below, preserving features that may be archaic or regional
> in the standard language; *language drift*, following internal tendencies
> within the source language, such as phonotactic morphological or syntactic
> simplification; *imperfect language shift* by the entire population,
> perpetuating features from ancestral languages or *interlanguages* (see
> below) in the speech of monolingual descendants, and *borrowing* features
> from fully pidginized or creolized varieities of the target language
> spoken by newcomers or found locally but confined to areas where
> sociolinguistic conditions are favourable to full restructuring; in some
> cases *secondary levelling*, corrsponding to the *decreolization* which
> full creoles can undergo. These processes result in a new variety with a
> substantial amount of the source langauge's structure, but also with a
> significant number of the structural features of a creole, such as those
> inherited from its substrate or the interlanguages that led to its
> preceding pidgin (Holm 1998aq, 1998b, fc).
> </quote>
>
> This second scenario, semi-creolization or, in my formulation, having an
> input from creolized varieties in its recent past, is what I have been
> talking about for the past week, and Holm claims it to have been a factor
> in the evolution of Afrikaans and Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese.
Then you would do well to start using the standard terminology in its
standard usages, rather than "your formulation."
-- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net
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