Sociological Linguistics

[Sheila Watts]

>From communication between Joat Simeon and Pat Ryan:

>> Middle English is not one iota more "effective" at communication than Old
>> English.  It's just different.  Languages change because they do.

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development from the
>simple to the complex.

>My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after the onset
>of linguistic communication, languages were simpler than they are now; and
>hence, less explicitly expressive.

But defining what is 'simple' and what is 'complex' is not always a
straightforward objective matter, surely. For instance, whether aspect is
by its very nature 'simpler' than tense. And sometimes the common-sense
intuition that systmes will go from simple to complex is hard to fit into
our reconstructions, as with the vexed question of the relative age of
simple two-term verbal systems in Germanic and Hittite and very complex
mulit-term TAM systems in Greek and Sanskrit.

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816