Re: Learning a language

From: Eugene Holman (holman_at_elo.helsinki.fi)
Date: 06/16/04 

Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 17:46:09 +0300

In article <40D041B5.43A4@ihug.co.nz>, benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:
<deletions>
>
> I'm sorry that I have not had the time to read the enormous volume of
> postings in these threads, but I wonder what are the real issues at
> stake?

The issue of whether the notion of pidgin is better defined in terms of
the sociolinguistic features that prevailed during its evolution, and
which prevail during its existence as a language lacking native speakers
and useful only for certain severely restricted types of communication.
This is not a trivial issue, and it is discussed with considerable
erudition in Suzanne Romaine's *Pidgin & Crealoe Languages*, 1988, chapter
2.

> The "pidgin" and "creole" terminology has been in crisis for a
> couple of decades, as more examples of interesting contact languages
> which don't fit the classical type emerge in the literature. The
> response of most specialists has been to keep the terms "pidgin" and
> "creole" for languages conforming closely to the original types

"types" defined in terms of shared structural features (with influence
from theories of Principles and Parameters and universal grammar), or
"types" defined in terms of the outcome of a specific and well-defined set
of sociolinguistic prerequisites (collision of at least two languages,
typically with inequalities of power between their speakers, resulting in
a desire between the two grouops to communicate in order to perform basic
activities such as trade, and the satisfaction of this desire in the form
of the emergence of a mixed but easily learned new language that lacks
native speakers and intergenerational transmission, is usable only for
certain types of communicative situations, and has a simple mechanism for
modifying words of the lexifier language to fit its norms and thus augment
its lexical stock.)

> so
> described, and to try to develop a broader theory of contact languages
> which would encompass both these and others such as Afrikaans, Ma'a,
> Singapore English, etc. etc. Some terminology like "intertwined
> language" and "indigenized varieties" has developed, but admittedly
> it's still not adequate.

> Holman, by contrast, seems to be happy to
> broaden the use of these terms to include the entire range of
> contact-influenced languages.

Not quite. I maintain that no matter how we define pidgin or creole, there
are examples of both pidgins, and piginized *varieties* of languages that
can coexist with the more standard language and influence its subsequent
development. Dutch continued to evolve as Dutch in the Netherlands, but
the subset of Dutch dialects that were transplanted to Africa evolved
according to a different path due, among other things, to their having
acquired a (pidginized >) creolized variety in conjunction with its rapid
and imperfect spread to speakers of local substrate languages. This
creolized variety eventually acquired enough prestige to be able to
provide some of the input which further determined the direction in which
South African Dutch would evolve, the result being a set of linguistic
norms different enough from those of the Dutch of the Netherlands to
justify calling it a distinct language, Afrikaans. So I am not claiming
that Afrikaans is creolized Dutch. I am claiming that Afrikaans is a
transplanted subset of Dutch which has been *influenced* by some of the
creolized varieties it acquired in a new setting,isolated from mainstream
Dutch, to have evolved into something different from Dutch, with many of
the salient differences being the consequence of input into the evolution
of its various norms from creolized varieties. What is interesting is that
the creolized varieties of Dutch, or more precisely their speakers,
acquired enough power to significantly influence the evolution of the
originally prestige variety.

> Van Etten Finnish is certainly
> interesting, and I'm disappointed to find that (apparently) nobody has
> published a description of it.

There are, however, many descriptions of "Finglish", of which Van Etten
Finnish is a curious subvariety. Most of these are only in Finnish, but a
large corpus of material, with an introductory account in English, can be
found in Pertti VIRTARANTA. *Amerikansuomen sanakirja. A Dictionary of
American Finnish*. 329 s. 1992. Siirtolaisuusinstituutti. Turku.*. For
those who read Finnish, a detailed description of the sociolinguistics and
structure of American Finnish is given in his *Amerikansuomi* ["American
Finnish"]. 207 s. + 32 kuvaa. SKS Tietolipas 125 (Karisto)

> In some respects it sounds like
> Anglo-Romani, a terminal version of an ancestral language functioning as
> a cryptolect.

That sounds like a good characterization. With the proviso that it serves
as a sign of local rather than ethnic identity and solidarity.

> But here the roles of grammar and lexicon are reversed.
> Still, one would have two immediate reservations about describing it as
> a "pidgin" -- (1) the survival of at least some Finnish grammatical
> morphology;

Standard Finnish is morphologically an extremely complex language (15
cases, 180 mostly simplex, some periphrastic, distinct forms for every
noun, more than 10,000 forms for each verb), and the morphology is
functionally important and thus not redundant. Unlike the case with the
complex morphology of languages such as Latin, Finnish morphology is quite
straightforward and regular: basically one meaning one representation in
both directions. If a language with such complex morphology is going to be
pidginized, and who is to say that this cannot happen, most of that
morphology is going to remain. Imperfectly learned foreigner's Finnish
also retains the core morphological structure, including the twelve most
important and productive cases, otherwise the language could not be spoken
or understood.

> 2) Is it really "nobody's native language"? From what
> Holman says, it appears to be understood throughout the community. At
> what age do people learn it?

My one informant, a former student and native of Van Etten, told me that
if they are of Finnish descent, they learn it from their parents and
Finnish relatives, if they are not of Finnish descent, they typically
learn it when playing team games: first numbers, than the case endings of
numbers, then simple sentences: Kaheksan passaa pallon kuuvelle! "Eight
passes the ball to six!"

As an amusing footnote, this former student was in a second-year Finnish
class that I taught at the University of Wisconsin. When she came to me
before the term started to find out if her knowledge of Van Etten Finnish
was sufficient allow her to skip elementary Finnish, my hair almost stood
on end when I heard her talk. Her Finnish pronunciation was well-neigh
perfect (except for the English-like intonation), but the grammar was
limited and the vocabulary as "outlandish" as it was old fashioned. The
first month of the course was very difficult for her, because she had to
un-learn a language which she actually did speak as something approaching
a second language witinh her family circle. But she eventually acquired a
fluent command of standard Finnish as well as the ability to code-switch
between the two norms.

> Even if most of its users have English as a
> primary language, they can perfectly well have a second native language.

In its present state, the language is too functionally restricted. It is
used for greetings, to talk about the weather, to make simple purchases,
to talk clandestinely in front of outsiders, and for team games. Its more
elaborated version is the dying language of an immigrant group with fewer
members and little contact with Standard Finnish except through the local
Finnish Lutheran Church.

>
> Forgive me if I have missed any important points made in this
> discussion. I guess I am suggesting that the argument is largely
> terminological and hence not ultimately very interesting. But I sense a
> kind of resentment or hostility on Holman's part against something, and
> I don't know whether that something is just Peter T.Daniels, or
> something more general in linguistics that he thinks has gone wrong. Or
> maybe he's just spent too much time in the snake pits of soc.culture.*?

No. I teach sociolinguistics and am obviously interested in discussing
this issue. As a person more interested in sociolinguistics than in
theoretical linguistics, it is natural that I am interested in
understanding why, as Peter argues, pidgins should be defined in
structural rather than sociolinguistic and functional terms. I also detect
a bias in what he writes towards understanding the process of
pidginization as one involving languages of specific typological types. My
sociolinguistically oriented view is that a language of *any* typological
type will undergo pidginization if the proper sociolinguistic conditions
are met, even though the outsome will be structurally quite different if,
say polysynthetic Georgian or agglutinative/fusional Finnish is pidginized
than if a morphologically simpler language such as English is.

Boiling it down to a signle sentence, I am questioning Peter's insistent
claim that pidginization can be defined primarily in terms of the
structural features of the outcome.

Regards,
Eugene Holman

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