rate of language change

[Glen Gordon]

>To use Larry's example, in Anglo-American you don't say "John he
>it has bought the car" or "He it has bought John the car" ("il
>l'a achetee, Jean, la bagnole").

Although... I've been known to say "z-bot da-kar" ("He's bought the
car") or "z-boR a-kar" ("He's bought a car"). Here, one might say that
English is developping present perfect pronominal subject prefixes:

                        Singular      Plural
  1rst person             v-            wv-
  2nd person              yv-           yv-
  3rd person general      z-            v-

And post-verbal object affixes:

  1rst person             -mi-          -s-
  2nd person              -yu-          -yu-
  3rd person (male)       -m-           -m-
             (female)     -r-

"She's bought him a car" ->  /z-bot-m a-kar/

Very different from that language called Indo-European, the subject of
the list that I vaguely recall now.

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Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com

Kisses and Hugs
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