Root versus lexical languages.

[petegray]

I wonder if we really can "distinguish" the two types of language?   Is it
not more of a spectrum, of which we can identify the two ends?   We might
well be able to compare two languages and recognise that one lies more one
way along this spectrum than the other, but I don't think we can make a
division, in the way Stephane's posting suggests.   Indeed, I have seen
precisely this comparision usefully made for English and German in a German
book about English.

As for "lexical" languages developing into "root" languages, is that not
currently happening in Chinese - where new formations are transparently
formed from lexical items by the addition of a further syllable or even
syllables, whose "lexical" meaning has become less important than their
lexicalising function?  E.g. the plural marker on pronouns, the -zhe suffix,
the temporal/aspectual markers, the directional markers on verbs, and so on.

Peter