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Re: TERMINOLOGY: Re: another new language to check out

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Friday, July 2, 2004, 20:30
I myself am encouraged by the variation in grammar within the esperanto
community, because only dead languages are completely uniform. :) It
seems to me that differences in usage is an indication that the language
is alive.

> En réponse à Joe : > > >> Surely, a Creole is a Pidgin that is spoken as a firstl language by some >> people... > > > Not exactly correct. It's true that a pidgin that becomes a L1 turns > into a creole, but that's a side-effect, not the main definition of > the word "creole". Basically, pidgins and creoles are both contact > languages, and the frontier between the two (an admittedly blurred > one) is on grammatical completeness: a pidgin is normally *not* a > complete grammatical system (there *are* things that are *totally* > unexpressible in a pidgin, how hard you try it) while a creole is > "complete": it doesn't have this limitation, it is a full-fledged > language (Some languages called pidgins are actually creoles, and > vice-versa, but that's common to mix terms among humans :) ). So of > course, when a pidgin becomes a L1, the L1 speakers will *create* the > missing structures necessary to make the language full-fledged (it > seems to be a remarkable feature of the brains to add things where > they didn't exist at first, and it seems to be rather innate :) . But > it's perfectly consistent with the works of the brains as > pattern-finder :) ), and the pidgin will become a creole. But that > doesn't make a creole "a pidgin that is spoken as firt language by > some people". There are creoles out there which started out already > full-fledged, with no trace of a pidgin stage. > > >> Is Esperanto? > > > It has never been a pidgin, but it does have native speakers > ("denaskaj Esperantistoj" as they are called in Esperanto, although I > prefer the term "Esperantoparolantoj" and reserve the term > "Esperantisto" for people who actually believe in the role of > Esperanto as world IAL and want to support it. I am myself an > "Esperantoparolanto": an Esperantophone, but not an Esperantist by any > stretch of words). I've even been told that there are families where > the parents are native speakers of Esperanto and the children took it > over from their parents. So it seems to stay even at adult age :) . > ________________________________________________________________________ > En réponse à Ph. D. : > > >> Another construction which is not official and is not recognized >> by all (most?) Esperantists is the combined progressive tense. >> >> A root X which is fundamentally an adjective can be made into >> a verb which means "to be X": >> >> La papero estas seka = The paper is dry. >> La papero sekas = The paper is dry. > > > Also not a very accepted construction. Never understood why :( . > >> "anta" is the ending of the present active participle, so a >> compound tense can be made (although not commonly used): >> >> Mi estas kuiranta la rizon = I am cooking the rice. >> >> (Normally one would simply say "Mi kuiras la rizon.") >> >> Some Esperantists form one verb from this: >> >> Mi kuirantas la rizon = I am cooking the rice. >> >> Again, this is not official and is deprecated by many Esperantists. > > > Except in poetry where it's accepted by everyone. > > I am myself one of those who insisted on using the synthetic forms > rather than the periphrastic ones which I found too long and rather > foreign to the language. The Esperanto structure asks for synthetic > forms. Why prevent what makes sense? > > It's one of the reasons why I stopped having any contact with the > Esperanto movement. They are a bit too reactionary to my tastes :) . > > Christophe Grandsire. > > http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr > > You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>