Home: Forum: Languages: Yves Cortez

Yves Cortez

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:28 pm GMT

>>The point is that the Veronese Riddle is a written text, something real, while we are still waiting for any text written in "normal Italian vernacular "....<< This is because the people who spoke such would have either been illiterate or literate in the lingua franca of the day, Latin, which they probably would have written instead. It should be recognized that many literate people at that time wrote in Latin even if it was not their first language, and were very often actually largely illiterate in their local vernacular even if they were literate in Latin. In the case of the Veronese Riddle, it is quite likely that it simply was written by someone who was able to write but not really fluent in Latin, so hence the Latin they did write was simply bad Latin, with some degree of Romance influence, rather than some kind of Latin creole. The view that such is actually due to creolization needs a serious amount of unambiguous evidence to be anywhere near substantiated, moreso than just supposing such was due to Germanic influence.

Guest   Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:39 pm GMT

Please take away the term "creole" and put "simplification by bad use of Latin by non native speakes coming in great numbers from outside the imperium romanum", then everything becomes less ambigous.

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:50 pm GMT

>>Please take away the term "creole" and put "simplification by bad use of Latin by non native speakes coming in great numbers from outside the imperium romanum", then everything becomes less ambigous.<< The problem is that contact does not necessarily ensure such simplification in and of itself. For instance, take North American English - it acquired a very large amount of new speakers who natively spoke languages other than English in the recent past, and yet it shows practically no grammatical simplification at all (if anything, it is often actually rather conservative grammatically). If anything, outside influence without creolization tends to carry over as phonological influence and the introduction of loans (be they individual words or particular usages) rather than general grammatical simplification (which is definitely evident in the NAE case).

PARISIEN   Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:52 pm GMT

<<The point is that the Veronese Riddle is a written text, something real, while we are still waiting for any text written in "normal Italian vernacular "....>> -- Exceptées quelques fautes de déclinaison relevées sur des graffitis à Pompei, on ne trouve pas non plus de traces écrites de ce fameux "latin vulgaire" présumé avoir été si influent et omniprésent. Il n'est connu que par reconstruction. Donc, rien n'interdit de supposer que ce "latin vulgaire" était en fait une langue substantiellement distincte, et aurait pu être d'usage général beaucoup plus tôt qu'on croit généralement. Un argument spécialement frappant de Y.Cortez est que le théâtre latin atteint son apogée au 2e siècle av. JC (Plaute, Terence), et puis... il disparaît. Remplacé par le mime !

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:59 pm GMT

>>-- Exceptées quelques fautes de déclinaison relevées sur des graffitis à Pompei, on ne trouve pas non plus de traces écrites de ce fameux "latin vulgaire" présumé avoir été si influent et omniprésent. Il n'est connu que par reconstruction. Donc, rien n'interdit de supposer que ce "latin vulgaire" était en fait une langue substantiellement distincte, et aurait pu être d'usage général beaucoup plus tôt qu'on croit généralement. Un argument spécialement frappant de Y.Cortez est que le théâtre latin atteint son apogée au 2e siècle av. JC (Plaute, Terence), et puis... il disparaît. Remplacé par le mime !<< /me shakes his head. The matter is that there is no need at all for a language to be written for it to be extant. Furthermore, even if writing is known in a society, there is no need for languages spoken in that society to necessarily be written at all. This definitely applies at the present, and even more certainly applied at the time of the Roman Empire and especially the Early Middle Ages, considering that the general population was illiterate at that time and those who were literate were likely literate primarily in Latin no matter what their native language happened to be outside of a few limited cases like Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia. Hence, the lack of writing in a given language variety is not evidence *at all* for its nonexistance at a give point in time.

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:12 pm GMT

For an example of such which does not involve Romance, take for instance Old High German; after the start of the Carolingian period and before circa 1000 CE, the small amount of OHG writing that had being going on disappeared altogether, with Latin being used as *the* written language in areas which were natively OHG-speaking. Just because writing was known in the OHG-speaking area did not mean that OHG itself would really be written at all during that period. Another similar example is Early Middle English after the Norman Conquest. For a good period of time, new writing in Anglic dialects simply *disappeared*, with all Anglic writing simply being the copying of older Old English writings. Yet at the same time, the language of the vast majority in England was always certainly EME and not Old Norman, despite the vast majority of new writings in that period being in Old Norman or Latin. Only would Anglic dialects really start to be written much again towards the Late Middle English period, leaving a significant gap in the written record of the Anglic languages.

guest   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:13 pm GMT

<<guest, the formation of creoles does not simply wear down the existing inflectional structure but rather involves the complete restructuring of grammar, and are generally highly analytic and if not purely analytic generally include a mixture of analytic or agglutinative features unless later decreolization takes place.>> Going from 6 cases to 2 sounds a lot like creole to me! New future tense, new perfect tense, new passive tense, loss of noun classes, analogous standard plural formation of nouns--sounds like restructured grammar... Romance to Latin similarities--often beefed up to deceive ignorant lay folk--are nothing more than aluminum siding on a house. No bricks, no concrete. Definitely no plumbing! <<It is clear from looking at Romance, especially older Romance, that such restructuring never really happened>> There is a paucity of information, really... <<, and what rather happened is much more akin to the slow wearing down of inflectional morphology and development of analytic that happened in, say, most of the Germanic languages. The change from classical Latin circa 1 CE and Romance circa 1000 CE is far more like the change from later Old English circa 1000 CE and New English circa 2000 CE than the changes involved in creolization, in that no sudden, rapid restructuring took place but rather a gradual wearing down of inflectional morphology combined with the gradual development of new analytic morphology where the original Latin inflectional morphology was never really completely eliminated. >> With Germanic it happened much later than with Romance datewise. Even Middle English, which *was* a creole of Old English and Old Norse [I don't care what they say] still retained a Nominative/Objective/Genitive case for two classes of nouns (strong & weak). Dutch only recently cast off their grammatical complexities [i.e. their German immitations] within the past hundred years or so. So this defense doesn't hold water well.

guest   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:16 pm GMT

<<In the case of the Veronese Riddle, it is quite likely that it simply was written by someone who was able to write but not really fluent in Latin, so hence the Latin they did write was simply bad Latin, with some degree of Romance influence, rather than some kind of Latin creole. The view that such is actually due to creolization needs a serious amount of unambiguous evidence to be anywhere near substantiated, moreso than just supposing such was due to Germanic influence. >> hmm, a Catholic monk who couldn't write proper Latin. Now that's a riddle!

PARISIEN   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:23 pm GMT

<<Please take away the term "creole" and put "simplification by bad use of Latin by non native speakes coming in great numbers from outside the imperium romanum", then everything becomes less ambigous.>> -- Non. La cohérence grammaticale de l'ensemble des langues romanes peut pas être le résultat d'une créolisation. En particulier l'originalité du traitement des temps des verbes, qui n'est pas une dérivation logique du latin. Si créolisation il y avait eu, on aurait vu naître quantité de dialectes très différents entre eux, qui se seraient éventuellement agglomérés par grandes régions pour former des langues normées. Tel n'a pas été le cas. La fragmentation dialectale est un phénomène TARDIF. Il fut probablement un temps où langues d'oïl et d'oc n'étaient pas séparées. Le 'Serment de Strasbourg' ressemble à un provençal, voire à du catalan! ("pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament"...). De même, un des plus ancien textes français est la Cantilène de Sainte-Eulalie, composée vers 880. Le 1er vers est quasiment de l'italien: "Buona pulcella fut Eulalia. Bel auret corps bellezour anima. Voldrent la ueintre li d[õ] inimi. Voldrent la faire diaule seruir. Elle nont eskoltet les mals conselliers. Quelle d[õ] raneiet chi maent sus en ciel. Ne por or ned argent ne paramenz. Por manatce regiel ne preiement. Niule cose non la pouret omq[ue] pleier. La polle sempre n[on] amast lo d[õ] menestier. E por[ ]o fut p[re]sentede maximiien. Chi rex eret a cels dis soure pagiens. Il[ ]li enortet dont lei nonq[ue] chielt. Qued elle fuiet lo nom xp[ist]iien. Ellent adunet lo suon element Melz sostendreiet les empedementz. Quelle p[er]desse sa uirginitet. Por[ ]os suret morte a grand honestet. Enz enl fou la getterent com arde tost. Elle colpes n[on] auret por[ ]o nos coist. A[ ]czo nos uoldret concreidre li rex pagiens. Ad une spede li roueret toilir lo chief. La domnizelle celle kose n[on] contredist. Volt lo seule lazsier si ruouet krist. In figure de colomb uolat a ciel. Tuit oram que por[ ]nos degnet preier. Qued auuisset de nos xr[istu]s mercit Post la mort & a[ ]lui nos laist uenir. Par souue clementia." De façon intéressante, tout comme le Serment de Strasbourg, cette plus ancienne "chanson" française provient d'un environnement bilingue, voire majoritairement germanique (souvent situé vers Liège ou Aix-la-Chapelle / Aachen). Sur le manuscrit fait suite, rédigé en vieux-moyen-allemand, le 'Ludwigslied' ou 'Rithmus Teutonicus' (le plus ancien chant allemand), écrit de la même main. Voir: http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/09Jh/Ludwigslied/lud_intr.html Il est permis d'en conclure que le 'roman' n'était pas un créole formé de façon aléatoire, mais dès alors une langue solidement structurée, bien établie grâce à son ancienneté, indemne de toute pidginisation, même sur ses frontières.

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:32 pm GMT

>>Going from 6 cases to 2 sounds a lot like creole to me! New future tense, new perfect tense, new passive tense, loss of noun classes, analogous standard plural formation of nouns--sounds like restructured grammar... Romance to Latin similarities--often beefed up to deceive ignorant lay folk--are nothing more than aluminum siding on a house. No bricks, no concrete. Definitely no plumbing!<< Again, mind you, this change is over approximantly a *thousand* years to begin with. You are acting as if this all happened within a relatively short period of time, as it would have occurred in the case of Romance being a creole. And also mind you that it is clear that the Latin case system had already been cut down significantly by the end of the Imperial period but not demolished either, in a fashion that can be easily linked with phonological changes rather than language contact. >>There is a paucity of information, really...<< By "older Romance" I meant Romance contemporary with the first significant writings in Romance, which date to the High Middle Ages, and which only became significant in number in the Late Middle Ages. >>With Germanic it happened much later than with Romance datewise.<< No, case loss is documented as occurring relatively early on in Germanic. Take Proto-Germanic - it had six cases, nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, and vocative, which was similar in the level of inflectional complexity with other contemporary IE languages such as classical Latin and Koine Greek. Yet, at the same time, by the time of Gothic being written it had lost the instrumental case and only retained the vocative case, while even the first attested West Germanic had lost the vocative case while only retaining vestiges of the instrumental case. By the High Middle Ages, the Germanic languages really had only a four cases, nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive in practice. And even in the latter part of the Old English period it is clear that the inflectional endings were already in the process of breaking down, due to mistakes in writing inflectional endings which imply that, despite how they were written, they were likely already realized as [ə] at that point. >>Even Middle English, which *was* a creole of Old English and Old Norse [I don't care what they say] still retained a Nominative/Objective/Genitive case for two classes of nouns (strong & weak).<< For starters, Middle English still had the dative case, which was only lost in New English. Also, the overall trend in the loss of inflectional morphology in ME is consistent with the pattern since the Proto-Germanic period, and really does not show too much of a disruptive change at any point. (The quicker loss of verbal morphology in northern Anglic dialects has been theorized by some to be due to Old Norse influence, but such really cannot be easily substantiated, and furthermore it still is not nearly to the sort of degree that would be so were it actual creolization) Likewise, Old Norse influence upon Late Old English (and attested through Middle English) primarily took the form of many loans being introduced into Anglic and some phonological influence being present in northern Anglic dialects (from which Scots and northern English English would be descended). >>Dutch only recently cast off their grammatical complexities [i.e. their German immitations] within the past hundred years or so. So this defense doesn't hold water well.<< Yes, some Germanic languages lost their inflectional morphology faster than others, and some still retain very significant inflectional morphology; however, the matter here is not the speed of loss of inflectional morphology but rather its continuity. Late Middle English clearly shows continuous change since the Late Old English period, even though this change was clearly faster than that in, say, Old High German and Middle High German, rather than having any truly catastrophic change occurring as any kind of creolization hypothesis would suppose.

guest   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:32 pm GMT

<<Il est permis d'en conclure que le 'roman' n'était pas un créole formé de façon aléatoire, mais dès alors une langue solidement structurée, bien établie grâce à son ancienneté, indemne de toute pidginisation, même sur ses frontières. >> I agree with it not being a 'creole' so to speak at the later date of the Oaths. That would have caused Spanish, French and Italian to be MUCH different from one another, and we know how close they are. However, had it been a creole while the Empire was still cohesive, it would have been installed everywhere, established everywhere, and then each dialect developing from there with close ties and immitation of one another.

guest   Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:45 pm GMT

<<>>With Germanic it happened much later than with Romance datewise.<< >> By this, I'm referring to the continued use of case in Middle English, Middle Dutch, Middle High German as opposed to say Middle French which basically had none *in comparison* So the fact that High German today still maintains case and a complex (more like complicATED) plural formation, is evidence that Germanic has held on longer than Romance. That's all I was trying to show. the reconstructed Proto-Germanic was further back than I was relating in this...

Travis   Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:41 pm GMT

Yes, it is true that Germanic as a whole has suffered the most significant loss of inflectional morphology later than most of Romance (excepting East Romance, which retains a nominative/accusative case, a dative/genitive case, and a vocative case), and the majority of such in Germanic happened much later than in Romance, but aside from the absolute speed of such change, the difference between the two is still not all that remarkable. And mind you that such still was not uniform in Romance; while Romance suffered a far faster loss of nominal morphology than Germanic, Romance still has very complex verbal morphology, while many Germanic languages (e.g. Anglic and continental North Germanic) have significantly cut down their verbal morphology in comparison with Romance.

greg   Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:54 pm GMT

'Guest' : « If it is bad Latin, written by a barbar, like YC analyses, and if this bad Latin resembles to a language in the middle between Latin and Italian, then we have a clear written indication that Romance was generated by barbaric people who have tried to write in Latin, which has succeeded in terms of vocabulary for the most part, but which, by contrast, has made big mistakes in grammar ». Ce que tu affirmes est illogique. Tu déclares que ***SI*** la scriptolangue utilisée est du « mauvais latin » (écrit par un Barbare), ***ALORS*** il faut en déduire que le roman est issu de l'écriture barbare en scriptolatin. C'est absurde. PARISIEN : « Or, more simply, by normal Italian people who had ony been speaking their normal Italian vernacular for centuries (according to Mr Cortez) and who had, in this time of general illiteracy, a poor practice of written Latin. » Cette affirmation est plausible et cohérente. Mais malheureusement non-démontrée (et non-démontrable car on ne sait qui est l'auteur de la devinette véronaise). Si on postule que cette affirmation est vraisemblable (à défaut de postuler qu'elle est vraie), l'auteur de la devinette serait alors une personne dont l'orovernaculaire était le/un roman d'Italie et qui utilisait le/un latin en guise de scriptovéhiculaire. Travis : « I myself would be far more inclined to regard this as so rather than any idea of Romance being some kind of creole or like. Early Romance is still *far* too inflected to be easily classifiable as a creole (which should be obvious if one looks at Romance verbal morphology, especially historically, and if one notes the fact that Old French, Old Occitan, and Romanian retain(ed) nominal case marking, which should have been completely lost were Romance a creole). » Stimmt. Daran kannst du auch Altkatalanisch fügen. Und vielleicht Altkastilisch. 'guest' : « Compared to Latin, Romance *is* creole. » Le problème c'est que tu n'as rien défini : ni le latin, ni le roman, ni même ce qu'est un créole... 'Guest' : « Please take away the term "creole" and put "simplification by bad use of Latin by non native speakes coming in great numbers from outside the imperium romanum", then everything becomes less ambigous. » Au contraire : on s'enfonce dans l'ambiguité la plus complète. Tu essaies de nous dire 1] que des locuteurs maternels de langues vernaculaire non-romanophones utilisaient une langue véhiculaire (le "latin") qu'ils maniaient mal — 2] et que ce maniement défectueux du "latin" par des non-romanophones serait à l'origine des idiomes utilisés par les romanophones maternels ?!? Ça tourne à la farce... PARISIEN : « Donc, rien n'interdit de supposer que ce "latin vulgaire" était en fait une langue substantiellement distincte, et aurait pu être d'usage général beaucoup plus tôt qu'on croit généralement. » Ça paraît en tout cas plus crédible que le "créole" germano-"latin". Et infiniment plus envisageable que l'histoire à dormir debout d'un Teuton parlant mal "latin" qui aurait — on ne sait ni comment ni pourquoi — transmis son "latin" de cuisine à un habitant de Tolède ou de Ravenne, lesquels, tout heureux de cette révélation exceptionnelle, se seraient empressés d'abandonner leur langues maternelles pour les remplacer par ce "mauvais" "latin" teutonique → on nage en plein délire... Travis : « The matter is that there is no need at all for a language to be written for it to be extant. Furthermore, even if writing is known in a society, there is no need for languages spoken in that society to necessarily be written at all. This definitely applies at the present, and even more certainly applied at the time of the Roman Empire and especially the Early Middle Ages, considering that the general population was illiterate at that time and those who were literate were likely literate primarily in Latin no matter what their native language happened to be outside of a few limited cases like Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia. Hence, the lack of writing in a given language variety is not evidence *at all* for its nonexistance at a give point in time. » Ich hätte es nicht schöner ausdrücken können. Ce que Travis disait c'est que le schéma implicite présent dans nos têtes est le suivant : orolangue X ↔ scriptolangue X orocastillan ↔ scriptocastillan orofrançais ↔ scriptofrançais oronéerlandais ↔ scriptonéerlandais. Mais même en France, il y a encore 30 à 50 ans, on trouvait la configuration suivante : orolangue X (maternelle) + orolangue Y (acquise) ↔ scriptolangue Y (acquise) orobasque (maternel) + orofrançais (acquis) ↔ scriptofrançais (acquis) orobreton (maternel) + orofrançais (acquis) ↔ scriptofrançais (acquis) oroprovençal (maternel) + orofrançais (acquis) ↔ scriptofrançais (acquis). Beaucoup des locuteurs "patoisants" du XXe siècle ne pouvaient pas écrire leur langue maternelle (orobasque, orobreton & oroprovençal) car ils furent alphabétisés en scriptofrançais (au moment où l'école leur inculquait l'orofrançais en parallèle). Il n'est pas difficile d'envisager une situation équivalente dans l'Antiquité : orolangue X (maternelle) + orolangue Y (acquise) ↔ scriptolangue Y (acquise) ororoman (maternel) + orolatin (acquis) ↔ scriptolatin (acquis) orogermanique (maternel) + ororoman (acquis) ↔ scriptolatin (acquis) Pour Cortez cette situation a rapidement évolué vers ceci : orolangue X (maternelle) ↔ scriptolangue Y (acquise) ororoman (maternel) ↔ scriptolatin (acquis). Soit : disparition précoce de l'orolatin. Et pour un romanophone du IVe siècle particulièrement instruit : orolangue X (maternelle) ↔ scriptolangue Y (acquise) + scriptolangue Z (acquise) ororoman (maternel) ↔ scriptolatin (acquis) + scriptogrec (acquis).

PARISIEN   Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:22 pm GMT

<<histoire à dormir debout d'un Teuton parlant mal "latin" qui aurait — on ne sait ni comment ni pourquoi — transmis son "latin" de cuisine à un habitant de Tolède ou de Ravenne, lesquels, tout heureux de cette révélation exceptionnelle, se seraient empressés d'abandonner leur langues maternelles pour les remplacer par ce "mauvais" "latin" teutonique ? on nage en plein délire... >> -- Zutreffender kann man es kaum sagen!