LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.16 (04) [EN]

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From: Sandy Fleming <fleemin at live.co.uk>

Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.16 (03) [EN]



> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

> Subject: Language varieties



> I wonder if any of you can come up with examples in which languages
developed the other way around,

> namely by acquiring more complex morphologies with time. I personally can
think of no such example.



I don't think my knowledge of specific languages is comprehensive enough to
answer the question or give any examples.

But you seem to be making the assertion that languages always simplify over
time.

This makes me want to ask further questions.

If languages always simplify over time, then are the earliest human
languages the most complex morphologically?

If the earliest human languages the most complex morphologically, then why?
Why would languages be created at their maximal morphological complexity? It
seems counterintuitive. Wouldn't you expect them to develop in a reasonably
simple form then become more morphologically complex before starting to
simplify? If they could become more complex in the past, then why don't they
now?

The only way I can see this happening is if languages (or the protolanguage)
started off relatively random, having random words coined for each bit of
shared human experience, and then organisation was gradually imposed on them
over time (maybe even a relatively short time), and the more difficult
aspects of early organisation then gradually simplifies as each generation
"misses the point" of such and such a construction, or branches come
together and erosion occurs with the resulting confusion and suchlike.

Organisation being imposed on chaos is in itself a simplification, so the
whole picture would be of languages being first chaotic, then organised,
then streamlined.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/



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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: Language varieties



Thanks, Sandy. Great question!



No, I do not assume that languages *begin* with utmost complexity. I have no
proof for this, but I do assume that at an early stage a language develops
morphological and in some cases morphophonological complexity, but that at
later stages, possibly by way of language contacts, there arises a perceived
need for simplification of a system that is perceived as unwieldy.

Why don’t we have proof of this? I believe it is because such early stages
cannot be traced because they belong to the distant past, before the age of
recording. Furthermore, morphological diversity among modern-day descendant
varieties can rarely, if at all, prove that a given simpler morphology
represents an earlier or later developmental stage as compared to more
complex morphologies in related varieties.

Perhaps the closest we can come to finding indications of morphologies and
morphophonologies first becoming complex and then simplified is in the
Altaic family of languages, especially among the Turkic languages. (The same
may be the case among the Uralic languages.) There are numerous members of
this group, and we also have records of now extinct varieties as well as of
historical varieties of surviving varieties. I have claimed that among the
Turkic languages previously separate bound morphemes (particles) developed
into clitics in some varieties and further developed into full suffixes in
other varieties. Turkic languages, like all Altaic languages, are of the
agglutinative type and have vowel harmony. A separate particle has its own
harmony, a clitic tends to obey consonantal assimilation but not vowel
harmony of the preceding word it modifies, and a suffix is
morphophonologically completely assimilated, i.e. integrated. And at a later
stage, vowel harmony may deteriorate, as for instance in Uzbek which came to
be adopted by large communities of previously Tajik (thus Iranian) speakers.


Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

Seattle, USA



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