Re: Vampire dialogue again

And Rosta wrote:

> Matt:
> > Well, I think I've come up with an analysis of Prof. Fromkin's
> > vampire dialogue that I can live with.
> [...]
> > Well, that's about it.  Comments welcome!
>
> I haven't seen the film, but if the scenario is the usual one, in
> which people bitten by vampires become vampires, and if the
> vampire language is one that your average vampire speaks,
> then unless becoming a vampire involves a radical restructuring
> of neural architecture, you'd expect the language to show
> extreme pidginization (because it's spoken entirely by L2
> speakers) along with many influences from L1s. I don't know
> how plausible your sketch would be, in the light of that, but
> suppletions such as _tat/ochach_ seem unlikely.
The mythology differs from the standard one, in that (a) vampires are
not immortal (although they age extremely slowly, and can thus live for
centuries), and (b) vampires can reproduce sexually.  There are those
who are born vampires, and who presumably acquire Vampiric as their L1.
Those who are born vampires tend to look down their noses at the
converts.

I think of the linguistic situation as being similar to that of American
Sign Language--a core group of native speakers who use a "pure" form,
plus a larger group of non-native speakers whose speech shows varying
degrees of pidginisation and substratal influence.  Unlike ASL, however,
Vampiric does not appear to be used as a primary language, either by
converts or by those born vampires; instead, it is used mostly as a
lingua franca between vampires who speak different native languages, and
as a mark of cultural pride (in this sense, Vampiric is perhaps more
like Hebrew for Jews, or Latin for Catholics).

Matt.