Since Harry has been forced to come up with this one, I think we can safely assume that he can't come up with a (let's just say) 'normal' present day society where his language model operates.

The next step, Harry, is to ransack history for an example. I hope you can come up with one for your sake because otherwise you will be left with just one, England under the Anglo-Saxons, for which we don't have any evidence only your say-so (and of course the say-so of Hildy and Co).

Since you have so very firmly nailed your colours to this particular mast you are going to find yourself in a particularly nasty state of cognitive dissonance: publicly affirming a position while knowing with an other part of your brain that it is untenable.

I'd strongly advise you now to stop digging. You cannot get out of the hole but it is at least presently a large hole occupied by a great many people. However, if you carry on digging you may find yourself on your own.

LOL, its funny how you guys ask for an example and, when given one, you don't accept it.

Yet, the rather poor attempts at translating Chaucer, with the exception of Ishmael who did a reasonable job, you mark yourselves and proclaim to be very good.

The fact is, if it was as easy as you all claim, you'd all do equally well.

I reiterate my challenge. Take 4 or 5 middle english texts into a year 11 class and ask them to write a version in modern english. According to yourselves, it should be easy.

The Vatican is a good example of an elite writing in an obsolete language and where the spoken language is quite different. You don't accept it, well that's your choice.

You do also need to study some of the more mainstream theories too as it is becoming clear that you don't actually understand what some of those arguments are. You won't find many linguists saying that written OE and spoken OE were the same for example. Yet you seemed rather suprised to discover this.

Also of interest, you may like to investigate the hypothesis that the angles and the saxons may have spoken different languages.

MJ, have you had a chance to look at the 'graffiti' yet?

best

HA

quote:

I hope you can come up with one for your sake because otherwise you will be left with just one, England under the Anglo-Saxons, for which we don't have any evidence only your say-so (and of course the say-so of Hildy and Co).

And Hildegard Tristram. Ishmael seemed impressed. I do strongly urge you to read her Diglossia.

best

HA

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What factors have been observed to influence the lag?

Literacy is the accepted factor determining the rate of language change. It forces people to accept conventions and standards. Hence its conservative effects.

Though I know you won't accept this.

best

HA

But we do accept your Vatican example, Harry, we really do. If you remember your original argument was that spoken languages "naturally" lag behind written ones, and do so to such an extent that the changeover from Anglo-Saxon to English could be stretched out from the two hundred or so years of the evidence to...mmm ...five or six hundred years. Your position was to the effect that this process was so "natural" that it did not need to be evidenced.

But it turns out that this natural process has only happened in one society in the whole experience of Man, and that society happens to be the most unnatural state that has ever existed.

'Course we accept your example, Harry, it's pure manna for us. Best tell Dame Hildegard and her confreres because they are relying on exactly the same scneario to keep their paradigm going belly-up.



It turns out that this "natu

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I have read that some informed commentators believe this to be a later interpolation. Sorry I haven't been able to find this...you'll just to take my word for this as an honest recollection.

(Sigh). I have little doubt that your recollection is honest Mr Harper. Forgive me for classing your initial statement that the language passage was "known to be an interpolation" as bluff (since I knew it to be nonsense.)

When you gave a more detailed response, your memory threw up a name -
. That should have told me right away where you had got mixed up. Nowel was a scholar of the Anglo-Saxon language. He had nothing to do with the transmission of the Latin text of Bede. But of course there was a later translation into OE. You managed to track down a comment on his transcript of one copy of that. It discussed the argument that he had added his own translation into OE of bits from the Latin Bede. In short the proposed interpolation was from Bede's own text.

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if other Bede-like testimony should turn up

Happy to oblige. This will give you more to argue about (though I won't have time to join in). There is a topographical preface to the D, E and F texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is based on Bede's topographical description of Britain. It includes his list of languages, but with some variations. Bede's Latin was of course translated into OE.

The D version: "The island of Britain ... and here in this island are five languages: English and British/Welsh [Bryt-Wylsc] and Scottish* and Pictish and Book-language."

The E version: "The island of Britain ... and here in this island are five languages: English and British and Welsh [Brittisc ond Wilsc] and Scottish* and Pictish and Book-language."

*Note from the Swanton edition: down to the time of Alfred, the terms 'Scots' or 'Scottish' refers to the Irish and Irish settlers in south-west Scotland.

And for those who are interested: Alfred's Prose Preface to Pastoral Care
in which he describes how learning had decayed in England so

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that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English, or indeed could translate a letter from Latin into English; and I believe that there were not many beyond the Humber.

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I saw, before it had all been ravaged and burnt, how the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books, and there were also a great many of God's servants. And they had very little benefit from those books, for they could not understand anything in them, because they were not written in their own language.

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Therefore it seems better to me ... that we also translate certain books, which are most needful for all men to know, into that language that we all can understand, ... so that all the youth of free men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it, be set to learning ... until they know how to read English writing well. One may then instruct in Latin those whom one wishes to teach further and promote to a higher rank.

Again I leave you to make your own deductions.

<<Forgive me for classing your initial statement that the language passage was "known to be an interpolation" as bluff (since I knew it to be nonsense.) >>

I acknowledge that my statement of certainty was...what shall we say?...a rhetorical stretch but your statement of certainty is actually worse, from an intellectual standpoint.

One of the principles of Applied Epistemology is that any statement by an apparently rational person which differs from one's own in a surprising way should be carefully evaluated. This leads us up many tree-lined avenues. As well as garden paths.

Most human beings, including you in this instance, dismiss surprisingly contrary statementsm usually by dismissing the bona fides of the person saying it, but otherwise as being in any case self-evidently wrong. If you accept my recollection as being in good faith you should take on board the real possibility that this passage is an interpolation and that reputable Bedeian scholars are disposed to think it.

As a Bedeian scholar this should excite you. It may lead to nothing, it may lead to everything. But sitting on your haunches leads only to...well, yes generally the good life but that is not what you or I were put on earth for.

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The D version: "The island of Britain ... and here in this island are five languages: English and British/Welsh [Bryt-Wylsc] and Scottish* and Pictish and Book-language."

The E version: "The island of Britain ... and here in this island are five languages: English and British and Welsh [Brittisc ond Wilsc] and Scottish* and Pictish and Book-language."

First of all, I think it's premature for us to tackle this problem in the now and here -- and in public. We're bound to make many mistakes in the investigation which will then be used against us. I'm much more comfortable just acknowledging Bede as an unresolved anomoly. Our case remains convincing even with this weak point.

But once again I find the lure of the puzzle irresistible.

What first strikes me from these two alternate passages is that they are, in and of themselves, much more amenable to our case than was the version initially cited. The one language which is now clearly absent from the list is Latin -- for we would make of Anglo-Saxon the above-mentioned "book language."

That is apparently even what orthodoxy makes of it. We are now told that Anglo-Saxon was an exclusively written language of elites while a different language, "featuring most if not all the basic grammatical characteristics of Middle English," was commonly spoken (yeah yeah...you say this spoken language was an evolved form of Anglo-Saxon -- we say the two languages were not directly related).

Interpreted in this light, the passage reads...

...here in this island are five languages: English [featuring most if not all the basic grammatical characteristics of Middle English] and Welsh and Scottish and Pictish and Anglo-Saxon [used mostly in its written form].

Now that's precisely the situation we anticipate.

quote:

Originally posted by Jean M:
And for those who are interested: Alfred's Prose Preface to Pastoral Care
in which he describes how learning had decayed in England so....

Again I leave you to make your own deductions.

Forgive me but I can see no contradiction of our case on the basis of the specific passages cited. I mean no disrepsect and I am probably revealing more my own ignorance.

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Yet, the rather poor attempts at translating Chaucer, with the exception of Ishmael who did a reasonable job, you mark yourselves and proclaim to be very good.

I did not translate. I transposed. I tried to correct only for spelling. Translation switches from one word to another, adjudicating which substitutions are best on the basis of an apriori interpretation of meaning. Our methodology is to just fix the spelling and make judgements as to which word is meant only on the basis of context.

For example, where one sees the word "wit" in Chaucer. Is this the word meaning "intelligence" or is it the color "white?" Or is it an alternate spelling of "which"? Only the context can hope to tell us.

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I reiterate my challenge. Take 4 or 5 middle English texts into a year 11 class and ask them to write a version in modern English. According to yourselves, it should be easy.

It's not quite accurate to say it should be easy. How easy is it to interpret any text using a complex vocabulary where nearly every word is misspelled? And sorting out what word is meant often depends on a context which isn't always clear because the surrounding words can also misspelled and obscure.

That said, if the group was able to succeed, it would indeed pretty-well establish our case that Middle English is just essential English spelled unconventionally.

Yet. I find it rather weird that you won't make the attempt yourself. If [i]you[i] can transcribe Chaucer into recognizable English for your own benefit, who are you going to believe? The scholarly consensus or your own ears?

Grab a copy of Chaucer. Sit down with it in a comfy chair. Tell yourself, "This is just English spelled wrong." Then crack open the book and start reading. See how you do. The truth of a paradigm is best tested in its ability to produce new knowledge. Where once I was blind, now I can see. Under the old paradigm, I could make no sense of Chaucer. Under the new, I can make quite good sense of him. Not perfect! But reasonable, considering the difficulty of sorting out such unconventional spelling.

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And Hildegard Tristram. Ishmael seemed impressed. I do strongly urge you to read her Diglossia.

I latched on the thematerial of two reasons.

1) It seems to offer a kind of common ground position where our two sides can mark out what is agreed between us.
2) The commonly-spoken paralel of elite "book language" Anglo-Saxon was directly equated with "Middle English".

Any scholar accepting this position is just one small step away from equating the spoken paralel of Anglo-Saxon with English itself. All that is needed is to be convinced that Middle English is English in its essentials, written witout benefit of spelling conventions using an alphabet cobbled together from Latin and AS.

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:
for we would make of Anglo-Saxon the above-mentioned "book language".

Would you? I'm sorry to interrupt the flow of your self-indulgent monologues to point out that if you went back to the source (always good practice) rather than taking somebody's account of a secondary source as the starting point of your triumphant pseudo-"epistemological" realignment of the paradigms, you would find that in the texts the word is 'boclaeden'(D) and 'bocleden' (E).

I am sure you will now sit down in a comfy chair and assume the spelling is wrong and tell us you still think it means "book Anglo-Saxon" and not "book-Latin".... or perhaps again one of you is sure you read somewhere that some guy says this too a Tudor interpolation added at the same time Bede was allegedly doctored.... Pathetic.

For goodness' sake, can you "AE" guys give it a rest? Can you please take this "discussion" to an Eng. Lit. forum or one of those amateur palaeoliguistics forums in which the Web abounds? This thread (all 24 pages of it) on Time Team Forum has long ago ceased to be a discussion on ARCHAEOLOGY (still less anything to do with Time Team) and with its long blocks of CONSECUTIVE posts all by the same person is just getting sillier and sillier.

You've plugged your forthcoming book Mr Harper, and shown us all the type of reasoning that lies behind its theses, your supporters and sock-puppets have all had a chance for their five minutes. For the sake of the rest of us (who you will note are no longer taking part in this farrago of nonsense), can you take it elsewhere now please? Thank you.

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As a Bedeian scholar

I'm touched that you see me as such, but I am in fact a building historian by profession. I have something of an interest in the Anglo-Saxon period, but my (very few) publications related to it are local studies, not textual criticism. Obviously textual criticism is part of the apparatus of any historian, but I do not specialise in it.

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Forgive me but I can see no contradiction of our case on the basis of the specific passages cited. I mean no disrespect and I am probably revealing more my own ignorance.

Sorry. I really cannot give more time to this thread, even if I wanted to (and I am very tired of it). I have to finish an article to a deadline, with other work piling up behind it.

The key fact here I gave when I first mentioned Alfred's preface to Pastoral Care. It's a preface to his translation of same into Old English. So we know that "English" in the text = Old English. And we see that he treats it as the language of all his free people at least.

Now I really, really must go.

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Harry, we really do. If you remember your original argument was that spoken languages "naturally" lag behind written ones,

Good lord no MJ, I have argued that:

"written language is far more conservative and changes at a much slower rate than the spoken language."

If I have written that the wrong way around in error somewhere, I do apologise but the above is confirmed by observation and comparison of the two processes.

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But it turns out that this natural process has only happened in one society in the whole experience of Man....

Why do you say that? You asked for one example and I gave you one example. If you want more:

Council of Tours, 813: The clergy was ordered to preach in vulgar latin because the spoken language had moved on so far that no one could understand classical latin anymore.

Arabic: literary classic arabic lagged behind the spoken arabic languages so much that modern standard arabic was introduced in order that speakers could understand it.

Norway's elite spoke a dano-norwegian language which led to a written language which was out of step with the spoken dialects in Norway. In the early 20th century attempts were made to rectify this. The result is Bokmål the 'book language' and Nynorsk or 'new Norwegian'. The spoken languages however remain somewhat different, depending on where one is.

It is quite wrong to think that the spoken language is reflected by the written language of the elite. They can sometimes be very different. Linguists term this phenomena a 'diglossia'.

best

Harry A

quote:

if other Bede-like testimony should turn up

See Nennius who refers to Scots, Picts, Britons and Saxons and who refers to the language of the Britons and language of the Saxons, with examples.

best

Harry A

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It's not quite accurate to say it should be easy. .....

That said, if the group was able to succeed, it would indeed pretty-well establish our case that Middle English is just essential English spelled unconventionally.

I agree with most of that. The 'easy' bit is due to MJ's assetion that 'nothing has changed' and '99%', but let's just say he got carried away.

There is no doubt in any of our minds that modern english is derived from middle enlgish, it's just the degree of difference. That's why I suggest the experiment.

Given that MJ admits he has no fossil, the rate at which the language changes is one area where he can demonstrate how academics have got it wrong as he claims. Moreover, such a study is repeatable and verifiable. It would cause a rethink.

best

harry A

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Yet. I find it rather weird that you won't make the attempt yourself.

I can't. I speak both german and english and have heard a good deal of low saxon. Consequently I get the rough meaning of lines such as:

And oueral foweles nede kindle by mixing low saxon 'ond õverall', english fowl and, as I read, kindle as if it is pronuonced low saxon kinner, i.e. with a soft 'd', though it could be the alamannic diminutive, 'le', of german kinder.

I see too much german in there.

best

Harry A

<<Given that MJ admits he has no fossil>>

That is not my position. I say that nobody has any fossils and that is why orthodoxy has had to make them up eg Anglo-Saxon for English, Latin for French, Italian, Spanish. That is why the rate of language change is crucial to this entire argument. If it is slow, then all ancestral languages are bound to be unwritten ones and therefore unfindable, if it is rapid then linguists can play the field.

Every language mentioned in these pages has remained essentially unchanged for the whole of their KNOWN lifetime, whether that be Latin over two and a half thousand years or English over six hundred years. This absolute mountain of evidence is simply ignored by orthodoxy.

Still and all, let's have a look at Harry's new batch now that the Vatican has rather turned round and bitten him. [And whatever I say about them I tip the hat to you for making the effort.]

<<Council of Tours, 813: The clergy was ordered to preach in vulgar latin because the spoken language had moved on so far that no one could understand classical latin anymore.>>

You noodle! This is one of the best illustrations for our side. Even you have acknowledged that French was French by the tine of the ninth century and the Treaty of Verdun so what do you think this "vulgar Latin" is except the French language itself.

<<Arabic: literary classic arabic lagged behind the spoken arabic languages so much that modern standard arabic was introduced in order that speakers could understand it.>>

Classical Arabic is exactly the same as Latin. It is a written form of demotic Arabic, or rather the several demotic Arabics -- they differ just as French, Italian and Spanish do. Of course if you think Classical Arabic is a normal spoken language, as you appear to do here, then you will have to explain why it has remained unchanged from Mohammed's time to now.

Nobody knows how much "lagging" the demotic Arabic forms underwent since they were never written and therefore nobody is any position to judge.

<<Norway's elite spoke a dano-norwegian language which led to a written language which was out of step with the spoken dialects in Norway. In the early 20th century attempts were made to rectify this. The result is Bokmål the 'book language' and Nynorsk or 'new Norwegian'. The spoken languages however remain somewhat different, depending on where one is.>>

I'm afraid you've been bushwacked by the Norwegians, Harry. In 1906 when Norway became independent from Sweden (and an independent country for the very first time) everybody was mad-keen to find anything distinctively Norwegian. So they invented 'Norwegian'. That is they seized on any differences in dialect that effect the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula and chose ones that happened to be in the Norwegian half. They called it Nynorsk (which is less different from Swedish than your Tyke is to Standard English). They then made some rather laughable spelling reforms and called it Bokmål.

The Norwegians, a fiercely patriotic people, took up these new forms with great enthusiam and now it is as hard to find a Norwegian speaking one of the traditional dialects as it is to find a Yorkshireman speaking Tyke. Sorry, Harry, back to the drawing board.

<<It is quite wrong to think that the spoken language is reflected by the written language of the elite. They can sometimes be very different. Linguists term this phenomena a 'diglossia'.>>

Linguists can call it what they want. Until they can provide a single example of the phenomenon other than the normal variation in all languages everywhere and at all times in history, I shall carry on calling it "********".