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 | | From: | Raymond S. Wise | | Subject: | Re: Not John Lawler [was; Re: "English English" vs "Angloid" [was: Re: Most Contributors [was Re: ScotsGate Scots Language Portal]]] | | Date: | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 05:09:04 -0600 |
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 | jwlawler@yahoo.com wrote:
> Raymond S. Wise wrote:
>> jwlawler@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>
>
>>> I am not an expert but I expect that English could be described as a
>>> creole (*) since its modern form is a blend of the original
>>> Anglo-Saxon, French and various other things.
>>>
>>> (*) I say creole rather than pidgin since some speakers have grown
>>> up with it as their native tongue.
>>>
>>> Anyway, are creoles and pidgins necessarily bad? The same could be
>>> said of other languages and some may only escape because records
>>> don't go far enough back to answer the question. Which languages
>>> are pure and why does it matter?
>>
>>
>> Pidgins are bad only in the sense that they are not complete
>> languages, able to accomplish everything their speakers need to
>> accomplish, as creoles are. Of course, a pidgin is a better lingua
>> franca than no lingua franca at all.
>
> Are pidgins necessarily incomplete or is it just that they may be?
> Are there any lingua francas which are no one's native language which
> are complete? Would they fail to qualify as pidgins just because of
> that? Or is it just inconceivable that a pidgin could become complete
> without becoming a creole first?
It looks like it must be a matter of definition to me: If it isn't a
complete language, it's not a creole language. John McWhorter, in *The Power
of Babel,* identifies Tok Pisin as a pidgin which became a creole as the
result of changes made by adults (unlike the case with most creoles, which
are created by children). However, Steven Pinker (on page 33 of *The
Language Instinct*) doesn't identify Tok Pisin as a creole language, but he
does say that it increased in complexity over many decades, and followed
that statement by contrasting that situation with the creation of a creole
by children "in one fell swoop." He says "The language that results when
children make a pidgin their native tongue is called a creole." So on the
definition of "creole," those two linguists disagree, and it looks as if
Pinker would not consider Tok Pisin to be a creole. I wonder if Pinker
considers Tok Pisin to be a pidgin but nevertheless a complete language.
>
>> The idea that English is a creole language is an intriguing one, as
>> is the idea that modern Hebrew (Ivrit) is a creole. However, from
>> what I have read, most linguists have concluded that neither is a
>> creole language.
>
> I have not looked into this before but I may do so now. Do you
> remember some of the reasons that English is not regarded as a creole?
> It has had tremendous influence from other languages. Is it that the
> grammar is basically Germanic and there is still a substantial stock
> of Germanic vocabulary? Is it that the other influences were mostly
> also Indo-European? Is it just that it has been stable for quite a
> long time and has shaken off its creole status. Or is it the
> literature (see below)?
>
>> Michilín referred to Chinook as a jargon, but Chinook is an American
>> Indian language. There is a pidgin based upon it which
>> Ethnologue.com identifies as "Chinook Wawa," also known as "Chinook
>> Jargon" and "Chinook Pidgin."
>>
>> See
>> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=CRW
>>
>>
>> This use of "jargon" is one which is now almost completely unknown in
>> English (well, American English, anyway). It's one of the older
>> meanings of the term. The following is from *The Century
>> Dictionary,* an American Dictionary of 1895:
>>
>>
>> [quote]
>>
>> *1.* Confused, unintelligible talk ;
>> irregular, formless speech or language ; gabble ;
>> gibberish ; babble.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Specifically*--2.* A barbarous mixed speech,
>> without literary monuments ; a rude language
>> resulting from the mixture of two or more dis-
>> cordant languages, especially of a cultivated
>> language with a barbarous one : as, the Chinook
>> _jargon ;_ the _jargon_ called Pidgin-English.
>>
>> [end quote]
>>
>>
>> I expect that "jargon" was used at the time when speaking of both
>> pidgins and creoles, the concept that a creole was a fully-formed,
>> grammatical language, much different from a pidgin, having not yet
>> been understood. As you indicated, English would be a creole, not a
>> pidgin, if it was considered to be a mixed language in the same
>> sense that a creole language is. The "without literary monuments"
>> would not apply to it, of course, but the same is probably true of
>> some of the languages which we know to be creole languages, such as
>> the creole version of Tok Pisin (which is said to exist in both a
>> pidgin and a creole form).
>
> Jargon has a new meaning that is so well established that care would
> be needed to use it with the old sense. The modern use of jargon
> seems quite appropriate to me.
>
> I did not realise that "without literary monuments" was a feature of a
> creole. If we dropped this requirement might English qualify as a
> creole? If Tok Pisin developed a substantial literature, would it
> cease to be a creole?
>
> Another way of asking my question above is: how could Tok Pisin shake
> off its creole status? Develop a substantial literature, just wait a
> few hundred years, develop mass amnesia with regard to its origins?
The business about literature is no part of linguists' definition of a
creole language, which depends instead upon how the language originated.
Linguists usually don't consider writing to be a part of a language anyway:
It's a sort of code for representing a language, rather than a language in
its own right. It was people prior to the time of modern linguistics who
identified a "jargon" or a "patois" as a language which did not have a
literature, and I have some French friends who still hold what I consider to
be some rather curious beliefs about, and who make what I consider to be
some curious distinctions between, minority dialects and languages in
France, based upon this old-fashioned distinction.
Of course, "standard dialects," the prestige dialects used in government and
by the media and taught in schools, do have written forms, and that makes me
question whether the sign languages of the world (which can be considered
"visual creoles") can be said to have any standard dialects, since they do
not yet have any written forms which are used by native speakers, but only
some sorts of transcription of interest only to linguists studying those
languages.
>
>
>
>>> Seán O'Leathlóbhair
>>
>>
>> --
>> Raymond S. Wise
>> Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
>>
>> E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
>
> P.S. Do you go to Rochester often? I have been to Minneapolis just
> once but I have been to Rochester many times.
>
> Seán O'Leathlóbhair
I doubt that I've ever been there. I don't believe I've been there as an
adult, and when I was a kid and my family drove up here from Illinois on
vacation we usually avoided anything but the smallest towns, so I doubt we
visited Rochester then.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
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