Origin & Evolution of Languages

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

>> With due respect, you are not really saying that English lost the number
>> distinction here because of English society becoming (more) *egalitarian*,
>> or are you ?

>Something like that.  Remember that in Middle English, the "ye" form,
>originally a plural, became a polite pronoun.  Out of politeness, the
>older "thou" forms were lost.  There was some degree of egalitarianism,
>or at least a more democratic society.

It is hard to believe this, /you/ driving /thou/ out of its function until
the 18th century, yet slavery being abolished in the Bristish empire in
1833 and the 13th amendment dating from 1865 (I suppose one addressed ones
slaves with /you/ and not /thou/ in the 19th century, or am I mistaken here?).
Of course, a wide-spread sense of egalitarianism in a society *may*  lead
to people *willfully* abandon politeness distinctions in their speech, but
to infer that, whenever the latter occurs, the former holds as a
prerequisite, is, imho, not viable. Neither the French nor the October
revolution made this distinction disappear from the French and Russian
languages respectively, although the sense of egalitarianism both incidents
brought with them (or by which their makers were inspired) was at times
hammered into the heads of the people.
In more abstract terms: a linguistic community may reflect a social change
A by some kind of language change B, but we may not, in the absence of
unequivocal extra-linguistic data, infer A from observable B alone.

St.G.
St.G.

Stefan Georg
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