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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Invention of Language
In-Reply-To: seagoat@primenet.com's message of 6 Nov 1996 00:48:01 -0700
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Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 18:36:37 GMT
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Sidebar:  English is *not* a creole language, nor did it start losing its
inflections only when the Normans invaded.  The process was already long under
way by the Battle of Hastings.

For a review of the evidence, I refer you to Thomason & Kaufman's _Language
Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics_.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
