Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

>Nik Taylor wrote:
>It's my impression that twin languages are almost always created by
>identical twins, it's just a matter of how long it lasts.  Also, I was
>under the impression that those were simply alterations (frequently
>phonetic) of their parents' language.  I'd have to ask my uncle if he
>remembers anything of his.  He and my dad (who's deceased) were
>identical twins and had just such a twin-language.
You may well be right, about the general characteristics. There are at
least fo couple of famous cases of more-peculiar twin languages with twins
who were not learning much of the adult speech around them -- due to the
unfortunate reasons that I mentioned.

I'm sure you're right about the common case, now that I think about it. I
certainly don't have any real survey data, and I wonder who does. I find
the more radical language creation more interesting, but that's hardly
surprising for a conlanger!

  -- David
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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
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