Re: Easy and Interesting Languages -- Website

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.


-- Mark

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