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L O W L A N D S - L - 18 March - Volume 01<br>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.16 (03) [EN]</span><br>
<br>
I believe that simplification is often related to an increasingly logical,
analytical view of the world: In early times people viewed a rock that was
being thrown to be in some way a different "thing" from the same rock
when it was sitting on the ground, and the person throwing the rock was
different from the one having it thrown at them. You therefore need somehow
different words.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">The idea of expressing
"rock-being-thrown-ness" and "rock-sitting-on-the-ground-ness"
by simply re-arranging the same few simpler words is a development of logic.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">It is difficult to imagine
the reverse process occurring, so that may explain why grammar doesn't get more
complex.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Also, the world of more
ancient people, with simpler technologies, simply didn't have the same amount
of things in them to name. As bronze and iron, ploughs and microchips turn up,
you are probably less inclined give each of them half a dozen different names
according to their circumstances.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Paul</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.16 (04) [EN]</span><br>
<br>
Sandy wrote:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">"If languages always
simplify over time, then are the earliest human languages the most complex
morphologically?<br>
<br>
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?"</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">It depends on when we're
talking about language evolving. Logically you would expect that, and I believe
it did - but not in modern humans. By the time anything like us turns up,
language has become fully developed. That development involved, I believe,
coming up with vocalisations for more and more things, but with no real
rationale or classification. Thus virtually every thing, in every situation,
needed its own word or words. That results in an extremely complex situation in
the language, that further development of thought and ideas allows one to
progressively simplify and rationalise.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Paul</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Derby</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">England</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(200, 137, 0);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Grammar" 2011.03.16 (05) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">From: Hellinckx
Luc <<a href="http://uk.mc286.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=luc.hellinckx@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</span></a>>
</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Subject: LL-L
"Grammar" </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Beste Ron, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">You wrote:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">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. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;"><span style=""> </span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Did Martin
Luther not go that way with his Bible translation? I thought at the time, the
use of cases was on the way back, also in German, just like in Dutch and
English (especially the genitive). He decided though to remodel German after
Latin, which made the language more complex again...for centuries and
centuries. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">This sounds exceptionally unlikely
to me, and there is no evidence that pre-Luther High German was less inflected.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">All older Germanic
languages, including Old English, are highly inflected, and the inflections of
each can be related to the other showing a common ancestor. If Luther had
deliberatley invented modern German cases they would directly reflect latin
ones - why no Vocative or Ablative for example?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">And what would induce an
entire nation (actually many nations) to take this complex system up, when
the vast majority were illiterate anyway? in particular, why would the Catholic
South have inflected German, if it were the invention of a heretical Protestant
Northerner?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">My interest in mediaeval
swordsmanship leads me to many German "Fechtbuecher" from the Middle
Ages. The works of Von Danzig, Liechtenauer, Ringeck and others pre-date the
Reformation - and all use inflected German.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Paul</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Derby</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">England</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Sandy Fleming</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:fleemin@live.co.uk">fleemin@live.co.uk</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Grammar" 2011.03.16 (05) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">sassisch@yahoo.com</span></a>> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> Subject:
Language varieties</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> However,
I strongly suspect that this use of initially foreign words for grammatical
marking did not arise out of a vacuum. Much rather, I believe that the
motivation was to replicate in this new intercultural medium grammatical
categories that existed within the native Melanesian languages, categories that
were considered essential in the cultures and thus in the minds of the native
population. In other words, mostly English-derived vocabulary (with loans from
German, Melanesian, Polynesian and Malay mixed in) served to create a lingua
franca that could perform all the fundamental functions other known native
languages could perform.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
Having had time to sleep on it, I'm not so sure that increases in complexity
are all that rare. The Celtic languages seem to have examples of increases in
morphophonological complexity, if I'm right in thinking that the features
observed weren't in ProtoIndoEuropean itself.<br>
<br>
Welsh seems pervaded with changes to vowel and consonant morphemes which,
although they become fixed internally to words, still show a pattern of
familiar changes throughout the vocabulary of the language, and at the
beginnings of words interact with the previous words in way that have become
tied into the grammar of the language.<br>
<br>
Plurals in Welsh are also fairly chaotic, and Welsh has nouns where the root
form is the plural and the inflected form the singular, so we get:<br>
<br>
plant "children"<br>
plentyn "child" (note the change a > e, a system of vowel and
consonant changes like this pervades the whole language)<br>
i plant "to the child"<br>
i blentyn "to the children" (note the change p > b which doesn't
occur in the plural).<br>
<br>
Many of these changes are hard to fathom and mainly just have to be learned
"by ear".<br>
<br>
In the dialects of the English southwest, there also seems to be quite a bit of
grammatical complexity not found in earlier English. For example, there's a
system of gender where uncountable nouns are neuter (salt, sugar, sand),
objects that are normally stationary are masculine (clocks, houses, trees), and
objects that have a means of propulsion are feminine (cats, cars, ships).<br>
<br>
If these exanmples are valid, then considering the smallness of my sample space,
this sort of thing may be quite common.<br>
<br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Sandy Fleming</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:fleemin@live.co.uk">fleemin@live.co.uk</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Grammar" 2011.03.16 (05) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">sassisch@yahoo.com</span></a>> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> Subject:
Language varieties</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> With
regard to my response to Sandy’s
point in the previous post, please let me add the thought that these days we
are unable to witness the birth and early development of natural languages
other than those whose geneses are those of language contact, or “linguistic
confluence,” so to speak.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Not true!<br>
<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Sayyid_Bedouin_Sign_Language" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Sayyid_Bedouin_Sign_Language</a></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: Grammar<br>
<br>
Thanks for all the interesting responses!<br>
<br>
Let me bounce another tentative assertion off you:<br>
<br>
Languages with simplified grammars (such as English and Afrikaans) are more suitable
as liguae francae because they do not require the foreign learner to deal with complex
morphological rules prior to acquiring a beginner’s working knowledge.<br>
<br>
Correct or false, and why?<br>
<br>
Regards, and happy Purim!<br>
Reinhard/Ron<br>
Seattle, USA</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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