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#3789: On linguists absence of creativity: Valdman replies to Poincy
From: Albert Valdman <valdman@indiana.edu>
I believe Poincy confuses linguists with "illustrators" of kreyòl,
that is, the people who try to adapt to the new domains of language
use. As kreyòl gains legitimacy among bilingual Haitians--all those
that participate in the Corbett list, for example--the is a need to
express new concepts and name artifacts not know by monolingual
speakers. Linguists do not create new words, they simply note what
people say by. Mow that we have computers, Linguists, such as
myself, who do lexicography, in short, dictionary makers, collect
written and oral samples of the language, analyze them, and then, on
the basis of such criteria as frequency, etc. determine whether they
have become part of the language. So Poincy needs to give his advice
not to linguists but to those who are creating the written norm for
kreyòl. I might point out that our own policy at the Creole
Institute is to be very critical of any new word borrowed from
French. An examiantion of how we render English words and
expressions in kreyòl in the Learner's Dictionary will demonstration
our "basilectal" orientation,that is, we try to determine how people
who don't speak French would render the English.
--
Albert Valdman
Rudy Professor of French & Italian and Linguistics
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall 604
1020 E. Kirkwood Avenue
Bloomington, IN 47405-7103
Phone: 812/ 855-4988
Fax: 812/ 855-2386