Re: Proto-Latin or Italic

Leo Caesius wrote:

> 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. [...]
>     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.
This may be, but it does not change the fact that most speakers
in the armies, and most of the members of the military retirement
colonies, who spoke what we are calling 'Vulgar Latin', spoke a
genuine form of Latin, a lineal descendent of Italian dialects
of the language from centuries earlier.  Even though long distance
trade reached unprecedented levels during the Empire, it did not
come anywhere near to the level of influence that we associate
with the term today in our society.  Trade affected primarily the
cities, which constituted a relatively small percentage
of the population even in the highly urbanized East (between 30 and
40 percent).  Because of this, trading languages were truely jargons:
restricted to the members of a particular professional class of people.

> "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.
I agree entirely.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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