Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 23:11:00 +0000


> 
> In article <memo.843625@cix.compulink.co.uk> petex@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
> >In-Reply-To: <gus.teschke-050193133237@no-name-medadmin.med.umich.edu> gus.teschke
@med.umich.edu (Gu
> s 
> Teschke)
> >
> >The short answer to your question is: Modern English comes from Old
> >English (5th - 11th Century AD) which comes from Germanic (spoken in
> >Northern Germany/Southern Denmark from perhaps 1000 BC? onwards),
> >which comes from Indo-European (perhaps 3000 BC).
>                         .
>                         .
>                         .
> >Of course particular *bits* of English come from elsewhere as a
> >result of contacts with Vikings, Normans, Christianity etc. But an
> >enormous amount of the basic vocabulary can be traced back at least as
> >far as Germanic, the same for the basic grammar.
>                         .
>                         .
>                         .
> Every time this issue arises, I argue that this
> description inadequately emphasizes the importance
> of criollization (mostly with Norman French, but I
> know some highlight earlier processes, when differ-
> ent Germans and Scandinavians were moving around)
> in the genesis of English.  That is, I'm saying
> that, *un*like say, French, which picked up bits
> of Arabic, German, Italian, and so on, English
> differs fundamentally from its Germanic ancestors
> in the regular and predictable ways of a creole.

Well my account didn't so much inadequately emphasize creolisation as
completely ignore it, really for simplicity's sake. Still that
doesn't mean it's not an interesting question and one on which
I've changed my mind on over the years, and for two specific reasons:

1) There's an article by William G. Moulton (can't remember the
reference off hand, but I'll find it anyone's interested) in which he
demonstrates, to my satisfaction at least, that there was a large
mesaure of mutual intelligibility between the Germanic languages in
the early Middle Ages, and he argues that speakers develop sets of
passive rules for comprehending the related but different language.
he also show how this works with contemporary Swiss dialects
speakers. (Personally, I'm sure I have much more trouble understanding
some of my Scots relations than any Saxon had understanding a Viking.)

2) The reduction of the inflectional systems in English, which seems
to me to be the best indicator of creolization, is in fact closely
paralleled in Norse & German, where the French influence which is
important for English simply has no part to play. In fact the Middle
English inflectional system is about the same as the Middle High
German, and the simplification of case marking has parallels with Low
German. And even if you disagree about point 1) above, the changes
during Old English are very similar in general type to those
undergone by Old Norse and Old High German. (There is another point
here about French which I'm not so sure about - I'm sure the Normans
started off speaking some sort of pidgin English, but did this have
sufficient prestige or authority to change the habits of native
speakers, which is what creolization demands?)

So for two quite different reasons, I've become less convinced about
the importance of creolization for English, though I agree the end
result would be very similar, so it's hardly very conclusive.

On the other hand, one area where I *do* think creolisation is
underestimated is the whole relation between Germanic and
Indo-European, where the massive sound changes and radical reduction
of the tense system seem to suggest exactly that sort of process.

> 3.  perhaps popular audiences are too ready
>     to understand language change as "mixing",
>     and this just muddies the waters for them.

Yes, I think that's true. I think it's useful to keep a broad
distinction between substantial changes because of mixing of
populations or large number of bi-linguals or lots of second
langauge use on the one hand and, on the other, substantial changes
which may have been helped by the presence of non-native speakers,
but which are in principle explicable in their own terms (in this
case similar to changes in other Germanic languages). Of course,
it's not clear cut: on the point I made above, if someone found
clear evidence that Anglo-French comprehension problems led to the
development of a high status pidgin or that there was more
intermarriage between English & French speakers then the whole case
would look very different.

One thing I think is very hard for all of us to have any picture of
is what it was like to live in a society where languages were not
identified with nation-states (or the lack of one!) and the only
official language was one that only a fraction of the population
could speak. I have this terrible feeling that there are crucial
things we just can't see because of the conditioning of our own
linguistic environment.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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Newsgroups: sci.lang