Transcript Is it Plausible that Middle English is a Creole?

Is It Plausible that Middle
English is a Creole?
Cheryl Stradling
The History of the English Language
• Old English (450-1150)
• Middle English (1150-1500)
• The issue: Is Middle English a creole,
particularly a Franco-Germanic creole?
What is a creole language?
• A language that originates from a pidgin
language and has become the native
language of a group of people.
• Characterized by mixing of languages,
language (structure) simplification, limited
vocabulary
Previous Studies
• Bailey and Maroldt – proposed that English is
a French-based creole
• Görlach – English is not a creole
• Danchev – English has many creole-like
features, but they are universal features of
language change
Plausibility
• The change from Old English to Middle
English occurred due to foreign influences,
namely Scandinavian and French. In
comparing Old English and Middle English, a
number of creole-like characteristics, such as
language simplification and language mixing,
have been observed in Middle English.
Implausibility
• While Middle English tends to exhibit creolelike features, the language maintained it’s
underlying structure from Old English. Some
linguists suggest that changes most likely
occurred due to interlanguage changes.
Methodology
• Make a list of characteristics of creoles; each
characteristic will be assigned a value of 1 point.
• Analyze Middle English according to list of
characteristics, giving it a point for every sentence
that meets a creole characteristic
• Total up the number of points, and find percentage.
Percentages higher than 60 will be considered
“plausible”.
• The characteristics that will be analyzed are:
embedded clauses, repeated adjectives and adverbs,
use of particles to change verb tense.
Text used
• “The Former Age” (the Alfredian prose
version)
– Old English translation (871-899)
• The Peterborough Chronicle (1155 AD) – 10
sentences
Results for: Embedding
• Embedded clauses: Creole languages have
little or no embedded clauses in their language
structure.
• In 10 sentences, 7 embedded clauses were
found so far
Results for: Repeated Adjectives and
Adverbs for intensity
• Creoles tend to use repeated adjectives and
adverbs for intensity
• In 10 sentences, 0 repeated adjectives and
adverbs were found so far.
Results for: Use of particles
• Creole languages tend to use particles to
change their verb tense
• In 10 sentences, 0 particles have been found so
far.
Conclusion
• Although each creole characteristic is still
being tested, current findings suggest that it is
implausible that Middle English is a creole
language.
Problems and Weaknesses
• Small sample size
• Language change over time
• Different texts
Future Work
• Larger sample size of Middle English
• Same text written both in Old English and
early Middle English
• English speakers’ perceptions: Do native
English speakers think that English is a Latinbased language?
References
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Aitchison, Jean. Language Change: Progress or Decay? 3rd edition. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
"Creole (language)," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2007 April 9, 2008.
<http://encarta.msn.com>. Microsoft Corporation,1997-2007.
Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. The French Influence on Middle English Morphology: A
Corpus-Based Study of Derivation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996
Danchev, Andrei. “Interlanguage simplification in Middle English vowel
phonology?” Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries, vol. 1.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.
Danchev, Andrei. “The Middle English creolization hypothesis revisited.” Studies
in Middle English Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
Görlach, Manfred. “Middle English – a creole?” Linguistics across Historical and
Geographical Boundaries, vol. 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.
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