Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

phippsmartin_at_hotmail.com
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: 17 Mar 2005 22:37:55 -0800

[sci.archaeology removed (the name in the header, not the entire
group). Feel free to make cultural references on topic in
sci.anthropology.]

Neeraj Mathur wrote:
> "Comm" <tjsrno@spampost.com> wrote in message
> news:FG9_d.10842$oO4.3945@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> >
> > "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:d1afl9$7ig$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
> >>
> >> "Comm" <tjsrno@spampost.com> wrote in message
> >> news:9lLZd.9617$oO4.4756@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> >>>
> >>> "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >>> news:d164co$i91$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
> >> I'm a bit confused here, because the definition of 'creole' that I
gave,
> >> which you agree with, was based entirely on grammar and structure
(note
> >> phrases like 'simplified languages', 'grammatical complexity').
> >> Vocabulary has nothing to do with that definition of creole.
> >
> > Hmm, not to my ear. I hear what happens when Mexicans, Anglos,
Haitians
> > and Jamaicans have to work together. Not too long before they
speak a
> > language in everyday use that heh, no one ELSE understands. Then
the
> > words I used before "contact and blending" (Martin also said
blending, I
> > think) is more appropriate.

Actually, I said "merging".

> Yes, certainly, there is often vocabulary blending. But does that
make it a
> pidgin or a creole? Vocabulary alone can be used to communicate very
basic
> ideas, I'm sure, and so that might work for pidgin. But the
distinction
> between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar.

Comm, I think what Neeraj means is that creoles are formed when pidgins
develop their own gramatical rules. The problem is that, since people
here are associating languages based on the development of grammar,
they would place the resultant language in group A if it developed a
grammar based on a language from group A and they would place the
language in group B if it developed grammar from a language in group B.
 Since it is highly unlikely that people who have their own language(s)
are going to create an entirely new grammar for a pidgin without it
being based on the grammar of the language(s) they already speak, then
perhaps you agreed too quickly to accept the definition of "creole"
given. Or perhpas "creole" isn't the right word. Maybe we need to
create a new term to describe what we are talking about. We could call
a language a "blend" whenever it contains grammar from one language and
vocabulary from another.

> > I think I know what you mean. Ever hear hillbillies talk? They
say
> > things like "uglysome," "lonesome" (means lonely, but "lonsome" is
still
> > used by everyone), they'd use "some" instead of "ly" all the time,
or a lot
> > of the time - even "friendlysome!" And they make words like
"yorn."
>
> What does 'yorn' mean? Something to do with yesterday..?

I would guess it would be used in the sentence "This is mine and that
is yorn."

> > The speech is also highly metaphorical. It takes a while, but it's

> > understandable. The grammar is mutilated - unless you regard it as
another
> > language (I do, but if I had to edit somethnig they wrote, I became
a
> > grammar/spelling nazi). The thing with written language is that it
tends
> > to be held in stasis by "those who ahem, Properly Speak it" -
unlike
> > non-written language.
>
> You're absolutely right here. No linguist worth his salt would
disagree with
> you. Within the speech-community of any given language, there is
likely to
> be one or two 'prestige' dialects - to the linguist, this does not
make the
> other dialects unworthy of study. But, as you said, all the varieties
do
> have grammar. These grammars can be understood from a historical
> perspective.

This is an area where I do have personal experience. In Asia, or
anywhere I imagine, when people are learning English, then tend to make
similar mistakes. Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, they will omit the past
tense, plurals, confuse countable and uncountable nouns, confuse the
meanings of words for which they don't make distinctions in their own
langugaes (bring/take, let/make, look for/ find, can/will, borrow/lend,
etc.) and speak with thick accents based on the way they pronounce
words in their own languages. They make similar mistakes even if they
have plurals and tenses in their own respective languages. But you
know what? They still understand each other when they are speaking
"English" amongst themselves, even though I might not understand them
and they might not understand my "correctly" spoken English. This is
how the different varieties of English come about: in the Philippines,
for example, where all the English in school is taught by local
teachers, the students are blissfully unaware of the fact that their
variety of English is in fact different from standard American English.

The book _Teaching English as an International Language_ (McKay, Sandra
Lee, Oxford University Press, 2002 - yes, I'm posting this from work
today) gives the example of Standard Singapore English vs. Singlish on
page 56 (quoting Shaw, W.D. 1983. 'Asian Student attitudes towards
English' from Smith, L.(ed):_Readings in English as an International
Language_. Oxford: Pergamon: 21-34). Even Standard Singapore English
differs from Standard American English, but Singlish would be a blend
(possibly even a creole) because it has its own grammatical rules.
McKay also gave the example of a study (Parasher, S.V. 1994. 'Indian
English: certain grammatical, lexical and stylistic features. in
Angihotri, R.K. and A.L. Khanna (eds): _Second Language Acquisition:
Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Aspects of English in India. New Delhi:
Sage Publications: 145-164.) which showed that Indian speakers of
English are more likely than British and American speakers of English
to consider "mistakes" made by other Indian speakers of English as
"acceptable". What local speakers consider "acceptable" is, in fact, a
different variety of English. You might have some first hand
experience with this too, Neeraj, if you ever find people from India
speaking a variety of English that you find a bit odd.

This is where all the arguments break down. What is English? Indeed,
what do we even mean by "language"? If a child points to objects in
the street and says "car... truck... bike" and then points to animals
and says "cat... dog... bird", is the child speaking English or just
reciting vocabulary? What is the child doing if he refers to objects
in the street using one language and animals with a different language?
 We do that all the time in English, refering to food with French words
(beef, poultry, pork, mutton), refering to farm animals using Germanic
words (cow, chicken, pig, lamb) and then taking words directly from
Latin to form techical terms (insert names of species here).

When a student of English uses his own grammar to write English is he
writing English or just using English vocabulary to write his own
language? I swear I've had students, when asked to write something in
English, write something using English words and Chinese grammar, and
despite what Comm says about word order in English being "unimportant"
and despite what Peter Daniels said about Chinese being "a lot like
English", the result is _extremely_ difficult to understand. When I
take up their writing in class I'll say "This grammatical structure is
used in Chinese, but not in English". If I hadn't studied Chinese, I
probably would have no idea what they were trying to say. But it must
have made perfect sense to them, assuming they read it over before they
handed it in. So were they writing English, Chinese or some perverted
blend of the two? (The problem, of course, is how English has
traditionally been taught, namely the grammar-translation method, which
becomes simply the translation method in the case of lazy students.)

Getting back to your point, Neeraj, the "prestige" dialects of English
in Singapore would be Standard American English and Standard Singapore
English. Is Singlish even English at all? If Singlish is like the
stuff my students here in Taiwan write then I'd say, no, not based on
the standards that people here give regarding English and French. If
Singlish grammar is Chinese grammar then Singlish would be "related" to
Chinese and wouldn't even be considered to be "related" to English,
even though much of the vocabulary is borrowed from English. One might
imagine Normans, centuries ago, coming to England to teach people
French (and loot their towns and rape their women) only to find,
centuries later that the resultant English language bears no relation
whatsoever to French and is still classified as being purely Germanic.
How discouraging a thought is that for language teachers!

> > It's everyday speech and no, it's not regional at all! I just
said to
> > the handyman before, when he asked me "Where you were?" I
answered, "I
> > left out to th'store, missed ya." He's a bilingual Puerto Rican
from NYC
> > and he had no problem understanding what I said - and I talk very
fast.
> > He said what he was going to do to a room (which I can't quote
verbatim).
> > I said, "ged." Normal English!
>
> Normal? I'm not certain. I speak English as a first language, I grew
up in
> Toronto, and I'm sure I wouldn't have understood the exact nuances of
what
> you meant. Heard on its own, 'I left out' would leave puzzled; in the

> sentence you gave, I would wonder what the particular meaning of your

> sentence is. It seems that it is not equivalent to 'I went to the
store' or
> 'I was at the store'; perhaps the closest is 'I'd gone out to the
store'?

Or "I went out to the store". Here "left"="went out" so "left out" is
redundant ("I went out out?") here. Sometimes redundancy is useful but
here it is just confusing. "Left out" could also mean "omitted", for
example.

> Certainly, in the moment and with context, I would have understood
enough to
> go ahead with the conversation. But that doesn't mean that the
sentence is
> grammatical in any of the versions of English that I know. The fact
that it
> is grammatical in the English you speak is quite interesting; the
fact that
> it seems to have a very specific semantic niche means that your
grammar and
> lexicon are certainly complex. I'd be interested in knowing how this
> construction developed. I wouldn't think that it has much to do with
> creolization!

I think Comm needs to admit he made a mistake that was, nevertheless,
understood. In the "China-Sumer" thread, Comm made the mistake of
saying "here (South America)" and people got the impression she was
posting from South America when "here" meant "America"... or "planet
Earth"... or "the Milky Way Galaxy" or whereever she is posting from
that isn't specifically South America. Even native speakers of English
make mistkaes. See? I just made a typo. No big deal. :)

> > Now, is "where you were?" a Spanish grammer thing? I don't know.
He
> > speaks English with a NY accent, not a Spanish accent. He was born
here.
> > I'm also phonetically spelling out the conversation here, verbatim.
 This
> > is normal interactive conversation, everyday mundane stuff.
>
> 'Where you were' might work as a word-by-word translation from
Spanish
> 'donde estabas', if the person thinks 'donde = where' and 'estabas =
you
> were'.

So was the man speaking English, Spanish, Spanish with English
vocabulary, English with Spanish grammar, a blend of the two or a
creole? This is getting confusing!

> Of course in English, 'where you were' is most naturally interpreted
> as a relative clause; most English speakers find that in questions,
> wh-movement forces the verb to go in second place, and if this makes
the
> verb appear before its subject, it must be replaced by one of the
invertible
> auxiliaries. What I just said is not something that teachers or
parents beat
> into their children, and wasn't always the case; but you said
yourself that
> you found 'what light through yonder windows breaks?' ungrammatical.
(You
> would probably not have felt as strongly about 'What light breaks
through
> yonder window?' or, better in keeping with the aspect rules of modern

> English, 'What light is breaking through yonder window?'. Now it's
just the
> vocabulary that seems a bit odd.)

"What light is coming the window over there?"?

> > This means that: 1) English
> >> speakers have an intuitive knowledge of a grammar that is
psychologically
> >> real to them;
> >
> > I doubt it. They are corrected as kids when they often say things,
and
> > they say things as if they are using that creole grammar (I read
one paper
> > on that, which was astonishing). Some kids, not all, are
constantly being
> > corrected by their parents due to wrong grammer.
>
> Of course, conscious correction is possible. But that's not the
primary way
> that children learn grammar rules. I was never corrected for using
'wrong'
> grammar in Hindi, nor was I ever taught what 'right' grammar should
be.
> Nevertheless, I know what is grammatical and what is not in Hindi.

I'm always correcting my wife's grammar but she continues to make the
same mistakes. I end up talking back to her the same way (a blend of
Cebuano and English) because otherwise she doesn't understand me. And
we've been married eight years.

> > There is nothing innate about how we speak a language.

We don't know that. Children are born capable of learning any language
on Earth. That could mean either that we are all blank slates and that
we learn languages from scratch or it could mean that we all are born
with an instinctive idea of what a noun or a verb is. The latter idea
would explain how we learn languages so quickly.

> > And I think that is the big problem. The Romanian was using mostly
Slavic
> > words. I even recognized a few of them (tho I no longer speak a
word of
> > Russian - well, curse words I remember HA!!), enough to know the
brunt of
> > the convo - which "races" would end up on which side! The
Hispanic with
> > me - and she understands all kinds of Hispanic (Spanish, Portuguese
and
> > even that other language spoken in Spain - the name of the language

> > startes with a 'c" - I don't remember what it's called - but she
> > translated stuff for me that was spoken in it. - and she also
speaks
> > Italian fluently her husband is Italian) - she did not understand
a
> > single word of it. Not one SINGLE word. The Pole understood it.
Now
> > here is the thing: apparently, it was easier for the both of them
to
> > speak like that, than to resort to what English they both knew -
and I
> > know they knew enough English to ask me a kind of complex question
about
> > ethnicity and religion.
>
> Ah, there's my answer. Okay, now I understand your point a bit more:
you are
> suggesting that a linguist should recognise a close link between
Slavic and
> Romanian because a Romanian speaker can choose from amongst the words
in his
> lexicon to make himself understood to a Slav, although this means
that he
> can no longer be understood by other Romance speakers.
>
> Yes, you have a point there. I would just mention that such Romanian
would
> sound very forced and contrived to most Romanian speakers. A better
test
> would be to see how much a Pole can understand when overhearing a
> conversation of two native speakers, or a folk song.

The point would be even better made if we knew why the Spaniard didn't
understand the Romanian. Perhaps the Spaniard didn't understand any of
the words. On the other hand, the fact that Romanian and Polish are
both Indo-European languages may be enough for the Polish person to
understand a Romanian sentence because the grammar would not,
obviously, have been too different. The same, however, cannot
obviously be said of English and Chinese: even if English and Chinese
people used the same vocabulary we probably wouldn't understand each
other, even though both languages are described as SVO
(subject-verb-object) languages. The fundamental question is, of
course, how similar does the grammar of two languages have to be for
people to be able to understand each other?

Martin

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