<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 19 October 2009 - Volume 03<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Paul Tatum</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:ptatum@blueyonder.co.uk">ptatum@blueyonder.co.uk</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.18 (01) [EN]<br><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
</span><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">From: Sandy Fleming <</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> <mailto:</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">>></span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.16 (03) [EN]</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 6.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
 From: Mark Dreyer <<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net" target="_blank">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net" target="_blank">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>>><br>
 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.15 (01) [EN]<br>
<br>
 Dear Mark, Ron & Co:<br>
<br>
 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"<br>
<br>
 What a fine string:<br>
<br>
 But let me explain my absence: In a surprise development (Thank God my<br>
 father did not live to know it), some misbegotten son-of-a-geologist<br>
 determined that the slough of blue marle-clay that bedevilled access<br>
 across to the farm these last hundred & more years is the crown of a<br>
 pipe of kimberlite - diamond-bearing. It is not on our farm but<br>
 next-door. Koos Engelbrecht's eyes have turned into dollar-signs, but<br>
 the rest of us know that any hope of continuing actually farming<br>
 anywhere around, game or anything else, has gone for a ball of pawpaw.<br>
 The farm has been sold & we have been packing & moving.<br>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
Uh? You must get some sort of compensation?</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 6.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Mark, you think we could say then that generally languages in contact<br>
 tend to simplify.<br>
<br>
 Moderately off the subject I recall reading in 'The Loom of Language'<br>
 how the author rejected the notion of language evolving in any<br>
 direction away from grammatical or towards the analytical, or to any<br>
 degree of simplification. Rather, he explained, it is a cyclic<br>
 process, in which analytic features blend into neighbouring words &<br>
 become indivisible constructions of a grammatical form, that gradually<br>
 fall away as other analytic devices are brought into use to be<br>
 absorbed & suffer modification, loss & replacement in their turn. He<br>
 referred to examples in the Indic languages with a Sanskrit base,<br>
 arguing (I don't know) that dialects could be picked out showing<br>
 different points in this cyclic process between grammatical & analytic<br>
 in repeated cycles.<br>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
That's what I was originally saying, I think?</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
Anyway, a question that I'm interested in seems to be going unanswered</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
here, and that is, do languages change even if there isn't contact with</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
other languages? A small island with only a few dialects of one language</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
and no outside contact would be hard to find these days, but such was</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
less unusual in the past, so would these languages still have kept</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
changing, and in what ways?</span><br></div>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
 In English, you could say that contact with Celtic, Norse or French
led to the loss of inflections. However an alternative explanation is
based on the internal dynamics of the language: Old English had strong
initial stress, which led to unstressed inflectional vowels becoming
schwa, which led to case endings becoming ambiguous, so word order was
used to help mark case which led to case endings becoming redundant.
This reasoning helps to account for the survival of genitive singular
ending - it was phonologically distinct even when unstressed.
(Additionally, the genitive plays a role at the noun phrase level,
rather than at the clause level like the other cases). As far as I can
see, most linguistic changes are amenable to internal explanations,
rather than reference to outside influence.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="margin-left: 40px; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> ... so would these languages still have kept<br>
> changing, and in what ways?<br></div>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
All languages are changing all the time. Obviously I can't prove that
statement, but when you consider the nature of languages and of
language, the chance that a language does not change over a period of
time seems vanishingly small. Phonemes represent ideal target sounds,
and in reality they have a range of realizations, which leads to drift
over time, speakers are constantly trying to make their speech emphatic
and lively, so new expressions are created and old ones become
non-emphatic, the forces of analogy, assimilation, dissimilation, and
the reinterpretation of syntactic and phonological structures are ever
present. Â In an abstract sense, there is always a tension in language
between communicative clarity (which encourages redundancy) and
communicative efficiency (which discourages redundancy).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Paul Tatum.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
•
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