Re: Rant on partial understandings (was: Spoken French, coins)

> Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2001 21:41:02 -0500
> From: John Cowan <cowan@...>
>
> Matthew Kehrt scripsit:
>
> > I've heard that this is the reason that modern English has no
> > cases: the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse ivaders eventually settled
> > on a lowest common denominator language that became English as we
> > know it. So English is essential a creole and was even before
> > 1066. I've heard.
>
> It's too extreme to call ME a creole. It did undergo substantial
> grammatical simplification, though.
One point is that there seems to be an abrupt change from Old English
to Middle English (names which are of course just labels affixed by
philologists in later years) --- and that this massive loss of
inflection and so on seems to have happened in a relatively short span
of years from before the Norman conquest to after.

The OE language, as attested in surviving texts, was borne by a
literate, conservative society associated with the courts of the
southern English kingdoms --- it was not an accurate reflection of
popular speech in emerging commercial centres like London. This native
high culture more or less vanished with the conquest.

Middle English, on the other hand, did emerge as a written language in
the new seats of government and commerce, driven by utility and not
bound by the traditional concepts of proper style.

Noone argues that there was massive creolization in Tuscany in the
thirteenth century, leading to the sudden appearance of Italian as a
language separate from Latin --- we realize that the slow development
of Italian during the preceding 1300 years was hidden by a hidebound
literary language. The OE/ME situation may not be that different.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)