Re: Proto-Latin or Italic

Mike Adams wrote:
"and the fact that VL was spread largely by soldiers, most of whom were not
native speakers of Latin."
    This was the view of Marichal, the epigrapher (and one of the
excavators) at Bu Ngem (Algeria), ancient Gholaia, where a horde of ostraca
inscribed with letters in a substandard latin dialect were found.  Marichal
declared (prematurely) that this dialect was a sort of "latin sabir" or
pidgin latin.

Thomas Wier replied:
"...which is almost certainly incorrect. Yes, Vulgar Latin may have been
spread by the soldiery, but they weren't pidginizing the language."
    Marichal's hypothesis was contested (successfully, IMHO) by the
classicist J.N. Adams, who claimed that the substandard traits of the
dialect at Gholaia were not characteristic of pidgins and creoles and
revealed a picture not entirely different from that of vulgar latin
elsewhere in the Empire, particularly Sardinia.  It was on the basis of
Adams' hypothesis that I built my Old Afer (the modern Romance language
based on Old Afer is still in the works).
    However, Marichal's hypothesis of a Latin "Sabir," which, even if it was
not detected at Bu Ngem, is supported by the classical literature.  Such a
Greco-Latin trading jargon forms the basis for the earliest stage of Waponi,
the Polynesian Greco-Judeo-Druido conlang.

"In almost all cases of pidginization, and to a lesser extent in any
consequent creoles that might develop from it, there is usually a complete
loss of all morphology of any kind from both substrate and adstrate
influences."
    Yes, this is certainly true.
    IMHO, people tend to bandy the labels "pidgin" and "creole" about too
much.  In my field I've seen Hebrew and Egyptian described as creole
languages.  Elsewhere I've seen English and Chinese described as creole
languages.  While it is incontestably true that English and Chinese have
pidgin- and creole- like characteristics, the historical evidence, which
shows these characteristics to have arisen over centuries of slow
development, is also incontestable.  The development of these languages is
incompatible with the model of the development of pidgins and creoles, as we
understand it.

-Chollie
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