Re: CHAT: Is there a conlang inspired in Old English?

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

>
> IIRC the argument is that French (and Gallo-Romance varieties of
> Italian) acquired front rounded vowels from the Celtic substrate.
>
I thought this was considered an areal feature, since it's shared between
unrelated languages which happen to be geographical neighbours? For instance,
if we take front rounded vowels, they are shared by:
- French,
- Gallo-Romance varieties of Italian,
- German and Dutch,
- Northern varieties of Basque.

In the same way, there is also some areal features shared by neighbour
languages like Bulgarian, Romanian and Modern Greek, like for instance the
evolution of "to want" into a future marker.

IMO areal contamination doesn't need any justification apart from itself. After
all, why should the changes that happen in a language be born in the language
itself only?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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