Re: Easy and Interesting Languages -- Website

Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:

> jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM said:
> > Mark P. Line scripsit:
> >
> >> I think he fails to show that Modern Cham cannot be considered a creole
> >> (or former creole) with Austronesian lexifier and Mon-Khmer substrates.
> >
> > I think the burden of persuasion would be on those who claim that it
> > can, and the required evidence would consist of specifically Mon-Khmer
> > characteristics in modern Cham.  The default assumption is that a language
> > is not a creole or ex-creole.
>
> I agree that anybody who wants to claim that Cham has undergone
> creolization  should be prepared to show evidence, and that the rest of us
> have no particular reason to believe it until she does.
>
> I don't agree that the absence of creolization in the evolution of a
> particular language is the default assumption. Neither the absence nor the
> presence of creolization can be assumed by default. By the same token,
> neither the absence nor the presence of pidginization, decreolization,
> koineization, segmantal assimilation, segmental dissimilation, tone
> emergence, tone submergence, metrical reorganization, consonant cluster
> reduction, vowel lengthening, vowel shortening, phoneme inventory
> reduction, phoneme inventory expansion, etc. etc. can be assumed by
> default.
>
> I therefore believe that anybody who wants to claim that Cham has never
> undergone creolization should be prepared to show evidence, and that the
> rest of us have no particular reason to believe it until she does.
I would agree if I believed that exactly 50% of all languages have undergone
creolization at some point in their development, and 50% not.

                                                               Andreas

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