Do non-standard dialects lack communicative functionality?
Oh, come on! Any form of language anyone uses has some kind of “communicative functionality” or he wouldn’t use it. Even most aphasia patients’ language has some sort of “communicative functionality”. Even very rudimentary pidgins have “communicative functionality”.
I agree. I wonder why so many prescriptivists would disagree? See Ammon 1998, for example.
Could you give some examples of what you call rudimentary pidgins?
I doubt prescriptivists would disagree. “Communicative functionality” doesn’t sound like a term that a prescriptivist would make up or use. It sounds like a term that was made up by anti-prescriptivists to demonize prescriptivists with.
Who’s Ammon? How can I see him?
Russonorsk.
I doubt it.
What’s the difference between a creole and a pidgin?
I also doubt they did exactly what I said, but whether they made it up specifically to demonize prescriptivists with or not, it sounds like the anti-prescriptivists are attributing thoughts to the prescriptivists in words that are not theirs. It’s like CNN, where Democrats purport to explain the thoughts of Republicans in terms that Republicans don’t use.
Jamie, if you could get away from your “Reds under the bed” reaction to so many threads, we might get a discussion going.
What you’ve said doesn’t relate at all to what I’ve said. What I said has nothing to do with any “red scare”.
In academic discourse, you frequently get one side devising a term to describe something that they think is desirable or undesirable, and they use it to explain the thoughts of their opposition. However, in many cases the opposition doesn’t use the term, or sometimes even the concept, and using the term to describe their stand creates an automatic distortion.
Aren’t you doing the exact same here?
No.
LOL! You know you are.
Loosely defined, a pidgin becomes a creole when children start speaking it as their native language. Usually by then, it’s also evolved some richer vocabulary and more complex structures.
OK. Thanks. Where does Russonorsk lie on that scale?
Russonorsk is a dead pidgin language that was at a very rudimentary level. It disappeared after the Bolsheviks began to seal off the USSR.
You can read about it here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russonorsk
Tok Pisin is still considered a pidgin, I guess, but because it is so widely used it is becoming a creole.
Don’t forget that there’s also a stage called “decreolization” in which the creole language is in so much contact with its superstrate language that it begins to lose its creole features and become closer to the standard language. So-called African-American Vernacular English is an example of that.
Only in your imagination. I’m not a true prescriptivist or a true anti-prescriptivist, and I am disturbed by both extremes. I’m very aware of the semantic games the sides play, and that’s what I’m pointing out.
And I say you’re playing the same game as they/m.
And you’re delusional.
OMG! :lol: What’s that? An example of “grammatical fence-sitting”? :lol:
Or bidialectalism. Do you think grammar usage is about taking sides then? About joining the “right” camp?
Bidialectalism? I see. To which dialect does ‘they’ belong? And which dialect does ‘them’ belong to? And why in heavens name did you choose to ignore other dialectual possibilities (such as you’s, for example)? Tsk tsk. How discriminatory! :shock:
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