Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue (23 page)

 

Matti Rissanen, “Whatever Happened to the Middle English Indefinite Pronouns?” in
Studies in Middle English Linguistics
, ed. by Jacek Fisiak (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 513-29.

 

Favorite star: Roger Lass, “Phonology and Morphology,” in
The Cambridge History of the English Language
(Vol. 2), ed. by Norman Blake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 23-155.

 

Schwa-drop observation: Thomason and Kaufman, p. 277.

 

Funny passage on gender in English: Chun-fat Lau, “Gender in the Hakka Dialect: Suffixes with Gender in More Than 40 Nouns,”
Journal of Chinese Linguistics
27 (1999): 124-31.

 

Hashimoto on Chinese: Mantaro Hashimoto, “The Altaicization of Northern Chinese,” in
Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies
, ed. by John McCoy and Timothy Light (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), pp. 76-97.

 

Four
DOES OUR GRAMMAR CHANNEL OUR THOUGHT?

 

Standard go-to Whorf text: John B. Carroll, ed.,
Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee

Whorf
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1956).

 

Kawesqar: Jack Hitt, “Say No More,”
The New York Times,
February 29, 2004.

 

“Users of markedly . . .”: Carroll, p. 221.

 

“Newtonian space . . .”: Carroll, p. 153.

 

Hopi data: Ekkehart Malotki,
Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Concepts in the Hopi Language
(Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1983), p. 534.

 

“No words . . .”: Carroll, p. 57.

“Potential range . . .”: Carroll, p. 117.

 

“We cut nature up . . .”: Carroll, pp. 213-14.

 

“It might be said . . .”: Carroll, p. 151.

“The thought of the individual . . .”: Dorothy Lee,

“Conceptual Implications of an Indian Language,”
Philosophy of Science
5 (1938): 89-102.

 

“It is clear that linguistic determinism . . .”: Carroll, p. 117.

Clark: Herbert H. Clark, “Communities, Commonalities, and Communication,” in
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity,
ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 343.

 

Wilson on Russian: Lewis A. Dabney,
Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), p. 409.

 

French verbs: Mark Abley,
Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p. 48.

 

Boro verbs: Abley, pp. 122-27.

 

Second
in European languages: Martin Haspelmath, “The European Linguistic Area: Standard Average European,” in
Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook
, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Österreicher, and Wolfgang Raible (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001), pp. 1495, 1503.

 

“Does the Hopi . . .”: Carroll, p. 85.

“Our objectified view . . .”: Carroll, p. 153.

 

Montagnais: Abley, pp. 276-77.

 

Cree: Thomas Payne,
Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for
Field Linguists
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 211.

 

Hypothetical Chinese sentence: Charles N. Li and Sandra A. Thompson,
Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 647.

 

Bloom study: Aldred H. Bloom,
The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West
(Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981).

 

Sign language: Leah Hager Cohen, “Deafness as Metaphor, Not Gimmick,”
The New York Times,
August 23, 2003.

 

Guugu Yimithirr: Stephen C. Levinson, “Relativity in Spatial Conception and Description,” in
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity,
ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 180-81.

 

Pirahã: Dan Everett, “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language,”
Current Anthropology
46: 621-46.

 

Everett on language as thought: He told me, on April 13, 2007.

 

Gender and thought: Lera Boroditsky, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips, “Sex, Syntax, and Semantics,” in
Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and

Thought
, ed. by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 79-91.

 

Imagining gendered voices: M. Sera, C. Berge, and J. del Castillo, “Grammatical and Conceptual Forces in the Attribution of Gender by English and Spanish Speakers,”
Cognitive Development
9: 261-92.

 

Kay quote: Paul Kay, “Intra-Speaker Relativity,” in
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity
, ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 110.

 

Paul Kay and Willett Kempton, “What Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?”
American Anthropologist
86 (1984): 66.

Barnard and Spencer: Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds.,
Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
(London: Routledge, 1996).

 

Textbook: Conrad Phillip Kottak,
Cultural Anthropology
(New York: McGraw Hill, 2002).

 

Five
SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

Statement on orphan words: Don Ringe,
From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 295-96.

 

Semitic etymologies of
fright
,
folk,
and
maiden
: Theo Vennemann has presented these in many places; the handiest is in German (“Zur Entstehung des Germanischen,”
Sprachwissenschaft
25 [2000]: 233-69). However, the most accessible English-language source is Vennemann’s website, which includes a handout outline of a comprehensive presentation Vennemann has given on the topic.

 

Historical evidence for Phoenicians’ travel northward: The handiest source in English is Theo Vennemann, “
Phol, Balder,
and the Birth of Germanic,” in
Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen: Festschrift für Jorma Koivulehto zum 70. Geburtstag,
ed. by Irma Hyvärinen, Petri Kallo, and Jarmo Korhonen (Helsinki: Mémoire de la Société de Néophilologie de Helsinki LXIII, 2004), pp. 439-57; see also Vennemann’s website.

 

Hebrew
cross
and
shore
and Old English
ofer
: Saul Levin,
Semitic and Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies, with Observations on Afro-Asiatic
(Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995), pp. 367-75.

 

Semitic source for Germanic
seven
: Levin, pp. 409-12.

 

Magnum opuses: Saul Levin,
The Indo-European and Semitic Languages
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971); Saul Levin,
Semitic and Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies, with Observations on Afro-Asiatic
(Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995).

 

Artifacts in North Sea: Matthias Schulz, “Göttertränen im Watt,”
Der Spiegel (
December 4, 2006): 160-62.

Acknowledgments

This book is based on detours in my academic research. My primary research focus has been on creole languages, but certain strains of my arguments in that realm have led me, by chance, to investigations of why English is the deeply peculiar language that it is, compared to its closest relatives, the other languages in the Germanic family.

Over time I realized that this research, taken together, constituted a revised conception of what English is and why. I found emerging in me a certain irresistible desire now familiar as the spark for all of my books: to get what was sticking in my craw down in book form.

I sensed that the point of the book would not lend itself to the process via which books are presented to agents and publishers: summarizing the ideas in outline form. I predicted that in bullet-point format, the thrust of the book would seem too in-house, too pointy-headed, too specialized.

So I did an end run and just wrote the book unbidden and submitted a whole draft to my agent. Much to my surprise, she, Katinka Matson, loved it, and to my further surprise, my now regular publisher, Gotham Books, did, too.

As such, my first acknowledgment is to Katinka, and to William Shinker at Gotham, for being open to a book with such a weird focus. Thanks also to Patrick Mulligan at Gotham for making the manuscript better—and notably for coming up with “Volcanoes” as the mnemonic for Icelandic.

I am also grateful to linguists Werner Abraham, Östen Dahl, Andrew Garrett, Gary Holland, Fred Karlsson, John Payne, Irmengard Rauch, Elizabeth Traugott, Theo Vennemann, and David White for their support for and feedback on the articles that this book is based on. Special thanks to Elly Van Gelderen, a sterling researcher on the history of English but open to new ideas, for first tipping me off that the folks arguing that English is shot through with Celtic influence are not crazy.

My argumentation was also sharpened by feedback at presentations of my work at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Helsinki, the University of Tromsø, the University of Toronto, and the University of Manchester.

Finally, my wife, Martha, read all of the chapters in first draft and restrained me from something linguists writing for the general public must guard against, a tendency to luxuriate in idle details under the impression that this will be comfort food to the general reader. Thank you, Martha, for “getting it” as you do because you have spent years listening to me gabbing about language and linguistics, but remaining aware of how my presentation will come off to readers who did not happen to marry me.

Index

ablative case

Abley, Mark

aboriginal languages

academic specialization

accusative case

adjectives

adverbs

Aelfric’s Colloquy

Africa

African languages

Afrikaans

Akkadian

Albanian

Algonquian languages

Altaic

Amazonian languages

American War

American Sign Language

Anatolian

Ancient Greek

Angles

and Celtic extermination theory

invasion of Britain

and progressive
-ing

Anglo-Saxons

and Celtic extermination theory

and education

and French influence

and linguistic equilibrium

and Modern English

and Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

and scripture vs. writing

and simplification of English

and Viking influence

anthropology

apartheid

Arabic

and grammar

path to Modern English

and Proto-Germanic consonants

Arabic (
continued
)

and Urdu

and verb placement

and written vs. spoken language

Aramaic

archaeology

Armenian

Assyrian

Austen, Jane

Australians, aboriginal

“The Awful German Language” (Twain)

Baal

Babylonian

Balder

Barnard, Alan

Basque

Battle of Hastings

Bengali

be
-perfect

Biblical Hebrew

biological gender

Bloom, Alfred

Boas, Franz

Boro

Boroditzki, Lera

Britain

Bryson, Bill

burial sites

Cádiz, Spain

Cædmon’s Hymn

The Canterbury Tales
(Chaucer)

Cantonese Chinese

Carthage

case markers

English and German contrasted

and language evolution

and linguistic equilibrium

Old vs. Middle English

and suffixes

and written vs. spoken language

casual speech

causality issues

Celtic language

and English dialects

and English grammar

and English vocabulary

and evolution of English

genocide theory

impact on English

and linguistic equilibrium

and meaningless
do

and noun cases

and orphan words

and the Picts

and progressive
-ing

and Proto-Germanic consonants

and Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

and simplification of English

and written vs. spoken language

Chad

Charles

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Chichewa

children

Chile

China

Chinese

Christianity

Clark, Herbert

Classical Malay

click sounds

clipping endings

Cnut (Canute , “the Great”)

codexes

Colasanto, Daniel

colloquialisms