'substantial surprise'

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Dear Aya,
just a brief comment:
This (how we call it) Grand Cycle is not necessarily unidirectional, as 
shown e.g. by Ossetian (North East Iranian) and Tokharian, both 
languages that have shifted from basically inflectional to 
agglutinating, without passing through the stage of 'isolating' (most 
likely motivated by language contact, I have to admit)...
Best wishes,
Wolfgang

A. Katz schrieb:
> (...) The language may have been highly fusional to begin with, so 
> that each sentence was really a single word. Then as the parts became 
> more independent, each separate word acquired its own inflection... 
> The inflections may have already existed, because in a prior part of 
> the linguistic cycle the language was less fusional.
>
> So the development may have been:
>
> agglutinative  --->    fusional -->  inflectional
>
>
> To get a full circle, you'd need to add this:
>
> inflectional --> isolating --> agglutinative.
>
> Some languages have a history of coming full circle. But even if we 
> don't see a full circle, this is how the cycle goes, a la Dixon. It's 
> a unidrectional progression  -- but it cycles!
>
> Best,
>
>     --Aya
>
>

-- 

*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang 
Schulze    *                                                               
 

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