Root versus lexical languages.

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 1999 9:25 PM

> 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

[Ed. Selleslagh]

What about the following theory:

isolating > agglutinating > flecting, in a continuous manner. And much later on
> isolating.

That seems a fair description of what's happening to Chinese (first step),
Finnish (second step), English (third step) etc.

Ed.