Sociological Linguistics

[Steve Gustafson]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pete Gray writes:

>> 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.

>I don't wish to be rude, but this is demonstrably untrue.   For example,
>Polynesian languages have simpler phonology and morphology than the
>Austronesian language from which they must have developed.   Likewise modern
>Chinese has simplified its phonology from that of the earliest recoverable
>records.  Afrikaans has simplified its morphology from its parent langauge.

I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get bulldozered.
What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried after the
sound changes have done their work.  Sometimes (Romance) the former
distinctions are completely levelled.  In other situations (Slavic) enough
remains after phonetic change has done its work to allow the older structures
to continue to function.

Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely, lest
speech be replaced by silence.  At some time, PIE must have had postpositions
on nouns and pronouns regularly appended to verbs by a fixed VS sentence
structure, and these turned into case and verb inflexions.  In some IE
languages, like the Tocharians, this process continued and begat some exotic
cases.  In modern French, all the inflections that marked case and number have
been mostly lost from the -ends- of nouns; so what they did was add them back
at the beginning.

Modern spoken English seems to be in the process of generating a complex,
highly inflected verb system, with many new and different aspect markers, as
former auxiliary verbs are reduced and lose their distinctness and independent
status.  We have already seen simple verb phrase structures of Early Modern
English (Knowest thou?  I go...) get replaced by more complex and highly
nuanced and aspected ones that require more words.  (Do you know?  I am
going...)  In our time, sandhi and palatalization reduce the once independent
auxiliaries in these phrases to enclitics, and also change the pronouns.  These
may be new inflexions in the oven.

This seems to me to pose difficulties for any attempt to get a firm handle on
the level of "complexity" present in any given language.  In English, the
(archaizing) formal register is noticeably less complex in both syntax and
sounds than the vernacular; where do you insert your dip-stick to measure the
complexity of "English?"  It also seems to suggest that there is no vector
moving in favour of either simplicity or complexification, but that the process
is one of a pendulum moving from one extreme to another; or rather, a process
of punctuated equlibrium in which sound change and grammatical change play off
on each other.

---
With wind we blowen; with wind we lassun;
With weopinge we comen; with weopinge we passun.
With steringe we beginnen; with steringe we enden;
With drede we dwellen; with drede we wenden.
                                  ---- Anon, Lambeth Ms. no. 306

[ moderator snip ]