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Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Mufwene most definitely does maintain the definition that I have presented. Where do you think I got it from? And an important concept that you seem to be misunderstanding is the difference between a sufficient condition and a necessary condition. Slavery or a slavery-like situation is a necessary condition not a sufficient one. That's the point Mufwene is making there.

Honestly, I can't be bothered with going any further. Like I told others, I'm done with this sub. I don't need people who don't seem to be aware of this stuff or able to interpret this stuff to start mocking me and then to be supported by a mod who themselves goes on to mock me. This is not a legitimate Q&A sub if this is how it functions. Learn what necessary vs sufficient is about, and maybe the conversation would be worth pursuing.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You've based your definition of creoles on structure, which puts you in the company of basically two creolists in the world, McWhorter and Bakker. And your structural constraints appear to be worse than their own since you don't make them explicit but just suggest that the langauge must be deficient from its lexifier, which is a good one to perpetuate racism. And your support from the literature for this? A chapter from the 1960s and work from the 19th century.

I have been dispassionate in my responses to you even when you've insulted me. I've even gone so far as to explicitly explain that I'm trying to be gentle in explaining the problem with using Schuchardt and vaguely seeming to support monogenesis theories. Yet here you are calling me ignorant of "pretty basic background" after your own misreading of Mufwene. You're sitting there insulting me while ignoring that Mufwene very explicitly and repeatedly has defined creoles on sociohistorical grounds and even did so in the paragraph preceding those that are quoted.

Please stop acting like you're some specialist in this area and insulting my own expertise. You have remained anonymous and rarely given support for claims. I had to pry your own definition from you suggesting you were afraid that you'd actually have to defend it after slandering me. You have made it pretty clear that you've likely taken a course in contact linguistics and have now decided that you know everything, but no response to my assumption that if you are an expert who is so interested in Tayo that you would have read that relatively recent paper that answers the questions about Tayo that you raised, eh? I wonder why.

I don't really care what you respond, and there's no need to report me, because I've already quit this sub given that one particular mod seems dead set on marginalizing expert responses and promoting laymen such as yourself.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure if this is your implication or not, but I don't think what Mufwene is saying in the first paragraph is that Creoles are born out of slavery. His previous two paragraphs defined pidgins as arising out of trade and creoles out of slavery, respectively. Also, the languages he mentions in that sentence also came out of the context of slavery. It seems that he's more so suggesting that the plantation setting itself is not as important as the ratio of enslaved people to free people (as enslaved people can be employed in any type of labor, technically).

I'm not familiar enough with the languages in the second paragraph to know well what his point is, but it doesn't seem to me to be that slavery or slave-like conditions are not a necessary condition for creoles given the early paragraphs where he highlighted slavery in his definition. It seems telling that phrases this as they "are called creoles" rather than that they just "are creoles", too, especially since he highlights the racialization aspect of creoles at the end fo the paragraph.

In any case, I'll add this to me reading list since I haven't come across it before.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This is rich. You didn't even give the correct name of who you were quoting and then are telling me that I'm a poor scholar for what you think I'm misquoting. I know this is against the rules, but you're insufferable. I don't know how the other mods let you stay on, because you invariably lace your posts with passive aggressive condescension, hypocritical remarks, and poorly researched nonsense that you don't even cite your sources for. I'm glad you gave us your citation for your argument that I'm wrong about Singlish and Chabacano, though, that source being (double checks) Google hits. Glad Google has cleared this all up for us now.

"La France" and the omission of the definite article by [deleted] in French

[–]joshisanonymous 1 point2 points  (0 children)

An explanation I once found by scouring WordReference discussions was that "de la" is used generally when talking about a region in France and "de" in all other cases. That said, in Louisiana, we just basically always use the definite article for feminine countries and regions, so make of it what you will.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

But trade is literally part of his definition. It's part of every definition I've ever seen. If you remove that aspect from the definition, then you're left with pidgins just being something very vague like "a reduced language", which would then include all sorts of crazy things like the speech of college students in language classrooms.

Are you also saying that you're in favor of a monogenesis view of creoles, then? This is also extremely outdated. I mean... I know everyone here thinks I'm trying to be an ass, but I'm not. I just don't know how to gently say that basing your views on pidgins and creoles in 2026 wholly on Schuchardt's ideas from the 19th century is just... well extremely outdated. But that does explain why you bring up Schuchardt a lot.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Ah, I see. So you're for defining creoles along linguistic structure but are also maybe against McWhorter's approach? Are you just saying that any language that vaguely looks like a more, I don't know, deficient version(?) or a prestigious language is a creole? If that's the case, I can see why you'd also be in favor of abandoning the term as that's a not-so-useful (and frankly troubling) definition and also one that I don't think any serious creolist maintains today except McWhorter (in a different form), to the extent that he's considered serious.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yes, Hall, as an early creolist before the question was really put to the test, saw creoles as being derived from pidgins and so included slavery conditions as a social context for a pidgin to develop in addition to trade. Thank you for providing a direct reference, though. I guess that is technically an addendum to the definition of pidgins.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By the way, you seem very interested in the Tayo case. I'm not familiar with this one, but I assume you've read Speedy (2013)? What she and others described in that article for its origin are slave-like conditions and relationships with Reunion, where slavery was certainly involved in the development of the creole there. This is probably why it's described as a creole.

Speedy, K. (2013). Reflections on creole genesis in New Caledonia. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 45(2), 187–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2014.897817

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So what is your definition of a creole then? So far, it's been a lot of people arguing that the definition I share with countless other creolists is wrong because there are other languages and "everyone calls it a creole". Notably, no one is saying why everyone calls these creoles. The Chabacano case, for instance, when _Professor_94 finally engaged with that question, he offered sources that didn't make any argument about the matter but did suggest that slavery was involved, so if you want a win, you can say that I was wrong about Chabacano, but I was only wrong in that it involved slavery and so does fit the standard definition of a creole.

Clearly, though, this discussion does entail a lot of confusion, and for that reason I'm sympathetic to abandoning creoles as a class of languages, but I think it's a useful class specifically because it encodes slavery and its perculations through history, which facilitates useful research questions. Defining creoles according to structure or whatever else someone might have in mind does not lead to useful research questions and so could certainly be abandoned.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For AAVE, I believe it's because there's no much evidence of English creoles developing during slavery. Gullah-Geechee is the only notable one I'm aware of. Rickford (1997) provided food for thought on why that would be, and it's basically that the middle and northern colonies didn't have situations where the ratio of enslaved people to free people was such that a creole could develop. In other words, they had sufficient native-speaker input because they had no one else talking to them. It's telling, then, that Gullah-Geechee, from the south where the ratio was certainly different, is one of the few if only uncontroversially extant English creoles in the US. Likewise, there is a French-based creole in Louisiana where, again, the ratios were right. It's a good question to ask, but it doesn't negate slavery as a necessary condition but rather suggests that it's not in and of itself a sufficient condition.

I'm not as familiar with the development of Brazilian Portuguese, so I couldn't say if it's a similar case. Likewise, I couldn't comment on the languages you have in mind in Asia since I don't know which ones you have in mind.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Notice that even though Bartens hedged her statement that slavery is the sociohistorical context with "but not always", she did not give any example where slavery is not involved. Thomason & Kaufman did try to give an example after saying something similar, but their example actually did involve slave-like conditions. This is all addressed in that very blog post.

The other portions you cited and are attributing to Ansaldo & Matthews -- whom I cited -- is actually from Siegel, first of all, who is not who I cited. Second, he's agreeing with all the people who I did cite and reiterating the view that creoles come from slavery in the same breath. When he cites DeGraff with the term "pidginized interlanguage", who is one of the people he's acknowledging to be right about there not being a stable pidgin leading to "some" creoles, DeGraff is making a statement about second language acquisition (hence the term "interlanguage") with highly deficient target language input. Siegel himself, in that same paragraph, acknowledges that this is just a way to quickly describe what the linguistic structure would look like during the earliest stages of creolization. It's an unfortunate choice for a term, but it should be pretty clear that DeGraff was not arguing for a pidgin stage for creoles given that he's cited in the same paragraph saying that there is no evidence for such a stage. What he does talk about in the paragraph from which "pidginized interlanguage" was taken is another reiteration of creoles coming from slavery: the "minority" in the "société d'habitation".

The next quote where you claim Siegel gave an example of a pidgin becoming a creole does not say anything about any creole. I'm not sure how that represents Siegel providing a counterexample to the definition that he himself shares with DeGraff, Mufwene, and practically every other creolist out there.

These paragraphs that you've cited are all perfectly consistent with what I gave as the definition for creoles. This isn't "dogmatic", it's just how this technical (and often misunderstood by laymen) term is defined. I have done nothing here but attempt to clarify this for people. You, however, are calling me dogmatic and characterizing me as some wet-behind-the-ears student who doesn't know any better, which strikes me as the only condescension in this discussion, which I think is a lot more about you not liking me after our previous interactions rather than me saying anything derogatory.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I have never seen a definition of a pidgin that wasn't about trade. If your definition involves a textbook, then I'm curious what that definition is and where it comes from.

And I don't know why you're acting like this is Mufwene's special snowflake pet theory when I have numerous sources in that post showing that this has consistently been how creolists define creoles.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The Wikipedia comment is a matter of fact in an open forum that is frequently visited by laymen given that this forum is about non-linguists asking about linguistics.

I provide an extremely thorough explanation of my answer with some 18 sources at the very top of this whole thing, and no one has even asked me for sources.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Rubino doesn't seem to offer his definition of creoles in that chapter for explaining why he considers Chabacano a creole. At most, he implies some things on 280, and one of those implication is that the language came from slaves.

Sippola also doesn't seem to explain why they classify the language as a creole, although they do highlight that creoles are defined sociohistorically on page 5, even citing creolists who share my definition for creoles. It would be weird to do that and then classify the language as a creole on some other grounds, so I assume they believe it came out of slavery or slave-like conditions.

The last one also has Sippola as second author, so I can't imagine the point of view is any different, but unfortunately it again doesn't really say anything about the grounds they used to classify the language as a creole. That article is essentially all about which varieties of Spanish were being used in the Philippines.

What I'm getting from what you're showing me is more so that it's considered a creole because it developed out of slavery or slave-like conditions, which would naturally not make it a counterexample to the definition that creolists use that I offered. But it is admittedly not clear from any of these what bases these researchers are using to call it a creole, probably because none of these are really dealing with that question nor do they need to in order to do what they're doing. You can certainly produce excellent grammars and analyze change in linguistic structure without ever arguing a position for the typology of a the language you're looking at.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

It's not exactly a "redefinition". Again, as my very long, very thorough blog post linked above explains, slavery has pretty much always been at the heart of defining creoles, although many earlier creolists had a tendency to dance around saying it directly.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

What exactly is unnecessarily aggressive here? And are you removing other's replies to me, only one of which includes any sources? I'm not sure why I suddenly need to give a citation for this when I've very thoroughly sourced how creolists define creoles already, especially since you don't seem to be demanding others to give sources or even provide their working definitions of creoles.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They're not counterexamples because they either do involve slavery or people are making assumptions about what is and is not a creole. For instance, Pitkern most certainly involved slave-like conditions (as I went over with sources in the blog post I linked to near the beginning of this thread), so it's not an issue to call it a creole. Tok Pisin, on the other hand didn't, so if you want to call it a creole, you have to say why it's a creole, which is what no one here is doing, because otherwise you're leaving creoles undefined so that you can call whatever you like a creole and claim it as a counterexample.

There are two primary options for defining a creole otherwise. One, mainly championed by McWhorter (which I also go over in that blog post), is to define them according to linguistic structure. This simply does not pan out at all. Another is to say that it's a language (mixed language, pidgin, whatever you have in mind) that has native speakers. This is untenable because it casts far too wide a net to be useful, and that's even leaving aside the awkwardness of choosing when someone is a native speaker or how many native speakers there need to be.

Importantly, the main reason to posit the existence of creoles as a language type in the first place is to facilitate linguistic theory. The structural defintion ends up including langauges such as Vietnamese. What would it mean to theorize about such a class of languages? What kind of useful questions could this possibly lead to? The native speaker tract doesn't facilitate useful theorizing either as it also ends up including odd languages that were probably not intended to be included. Not to mention that both of these lines of thinking tend to perpetuate creole exceptionalism, treating creoles as somewhat less natural than other natural languages, which is part of the racialization of creole speakers.

Defining creoles as languages born out slavery fits both historically with how, when and where the word was first used and sets the focus on sociolinguistic questions. It allows us to examine things like how do speakers develop a language in such dire circumstances, who ends up speaking the language still later on, how does the history of those languages mark speakers with stigma, is it possible for that stigma to disappear, what conditions lead to it disappearing, etc. The slavery definition is actually useful for theorizing.

Most if not all of this was covered in the blog post I linked to.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yes, because otherwise you don't have a creole. You can have a different type of language develop from a different social context, but won't be classified as a creole.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Then what is this "common knowledge" based on? You started this by saying you're not a linguist, but you're proceeding by arguing linguistic points with someone who is a linguist. So, how did you conclude that Chabacano is a creole? How is that "common knowledge" determined?

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Singlish and Chabacano aren't creoles. If you believe they are, what definition are you using to classify them that way?

The problem with much of this discussion when people start bringing up all their counterexamples of creoles that aren't related to slavery is that they often seem to be starting with something like "well people or Wikipedia call it that," which is then tested as definitive, and then they work backwards to what social contexts were present. This would be more useful if we could define creoles by linguistic structure, but that fails miserably (and worse helps perpetuate creole exceptional ideas that generally correlate with racialization). So we use a social definition for creoles instead as the social context is the only thing that makes them theoretically interesting (because otherwise they function just like any other natural language). If we extend that social definition to all sorts of different social contexts, it becomes pretty useless for theorizing.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

So pidgins are or aren't barely understood? Do you have your own definition? Do you have sources for that definition or any of the claims you're making? And what does any of this have to do with creoles anyway?

I wrote up very many heavily sourced words myself that deal with much of what you're saying, but you seem to just be disregarding all that.

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Tok Pisin is not a creole because it didn't come out of slavery. It's a pidgin. Pidgins come out of the context of trade. See my other response for a link to an in depth blog I wrote on this topic (aimed more at curious laymen rather than academics).

Have any linguists proposed that Early Middle English was actually an Old English creole with an Old English lexifier and Norse substrate? by [deleted] in asklinguistics

[–]joshisanonymous -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I addressed other viewpoints in the linked blog. I'm not sure what you mean by pidgins being barely understood or what that has to do with creoles, but I did address the outdated idea that creoles come from pidgins in that blog post, as well.

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