Creole or Pidgin? (Was Indo-European Studies)

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@#$%!?! (smryan@netcom.com) wrote:

: Actually, there are doubts. Benviste argued PIE might have been a
: creole, a trading language developed among many distinct cultures
: of central europe through the steppes.

Just a nitpick - a "creole" is a language based on two or more languages
that is the native language of a group of people; that is, they may speak
no other language. A trading language, a simplified language used for
communication between people with different native language, is usually
called a "pidgin". Which way did Benviste actually describe
Proto-IndoEuropean - a creole or a trading language? Or perhaps it was
as a "lingua franca" - a (third) language adopted as the common tongue
for communication between or among diverse language groups - such as
French in diplomacy (in years past) or Swahili in Africa.

--

David Wasserman      (davidwss@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca)

Curmudgeon-At-Large  (DWasserman@edc.gov.ab.ca)

"The older I get, the more value I place on experience."

 

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