Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:
> Andreas Johansson said:
> > Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:
> >
> >>
> >> 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.
>
>
> So instead, you believe that exactly N% of all languages have undergone
> creolization at some point in their development, and 100-N% not,
Assuming we consider whether language X has undergone creolization at some point
in their development to be a binary question, I don't see how anyone could
disagree with that.
> and that
> it therefore makes sense to bias your going-in assumption based on whether
> N is greater or less than 50?
Yes. If you've got nothing else to go by, guessing on the most common result has
the best chances of being correct.
> Where did you come up with the value of N, and what is it?
I never said I knew what it was.
Andreas