Re: New Lang, but Just For Fun

Hello Nicole and the rest 'involved' in this little project.

Strangely enough, but with great timing, I'm taking a class
on contact languages (i.e. mostly pidgins and creoles) this term.
So, from what I've learned so far, I might have some ideas.

If I have understood things correctly, pidgins don't have
any ancestral languages at all. (Compared to 'normal' langs
which have one and mixed languages which have two.)
This means that you can't derive any constructions from
*any* language. The pidgin is created from scratch. This
is apparantly because of something called 'broken transmission',
the lang isn't passed on from generation to generation.

Other features of pidgins:

As Ray said, it's no one's mother tongue.
It differs from its lexifier in that it is simplified
and generalized.
It has some sorts of rules. Speakers of the lexifier
still has to *learn* the pidgin.
Normally around 80 per cent of the lexicon comes from
the lexifier.

Pidgins are often both simplified and impoverished.

Simplified often in the sense 'generalized'. If, for
example, the lexifier is both SVO and SOV, the pidgin
generalizes it to SVO only. -> simplified but not
impoverished.

Impoverished means that the lang's expressiveness
diminishes. For instance the lexicon often only consists
of a couple of hundred words.

Very often there is only one adposition taking care of
everything that adpositions normally do.

Here's a handy schema of the development from
lexifier > pidgin > creole:

\     / <- lexifier
 \   /
  \ /
  | | <- pidgin
  / \
 /   \
/     \ <- creole: not like the lexifier, but something
                   completely different.

> Nouns:
> The three vulgar latin declensions (sort of) stay with
> the language, although the plural is thrown out
So, from what I can tell, I don't think that there
would remain any declinations at all in Raatingo.

Regarding the verbs, my guess would be that only
an 'infinitive' remains and that - if necessary -
adverbs will be used to denote time. E.g. yesterday,
now, tomorrow.

"I buy fish" > I bought/buy/will buy fish.
"I buy yesterday fish" > I bought fish.

Well, that's all I can think of. Keep us updated
on the progress of Raatingo.

Daniel