Sociological Linguistics

[Rick Mc Callister]

	In your answer, I think you show that the processes of
simplification and complexity are two-way streets. Languages become both
more simpler and more complex.
	French and Chinese, as they approach the limits of one
morphological system, move to another one. Chinese overcomes confusion
through compounding (and ideographs), while (as you state) French becomes a
prefixing language. In this manner, new complexities are created. These new
complexities, in turn,  undergo "simplications" that lead to other types of
complexities.
	So in French, avoir, unlike Italian avere, needs pronouns in order
to express person & number. A new complication.

	French		Italian
	il ont		ha
	ils ont		hanno

	But then spoken French pulls a fast one on us by simplifying the
prefix.

	<il ont> /ilo~/ > /io~/
	<ils ont> /ilzo~/ > /zo~/

	Now an auxiliary pronoun has become a bound morpheme. Another
complication.

	In spoken American English final /-t/ often becomes /?/
So can /kaen/ & can't /kaen?/ have to be distinguished by a combination of
stress & tone
	I can go /aykaeGO/ with rising tone on the last syllable
	I can't go /ayKAEN?go/ with rising tone on the 2nd syllable

	Now, as a non-linguist, I don't know the
dynamics/inter-relationship of stress & tone but both tone and stress are
clearly involved --thereby creating a new complication.


>I suspect that movements towards the "simpler" or "complex" have to do as much
>with the direction of phonetic developments as they do with any necessary
>evolutionary vector.  If a language is undergoing the process seen over and
>over again in IE languages, where final consonants or vowels get dropped, this
>languages will seem to become "simpler" as former distinctions get
>bulldozered.
>What is left may depend on how many distinctions can still be carried
>after the
>sound changes have done their work.

[snip]

>Obviously, though, this kind of phonetic change cannot go on indefinitely,
>lest
>speech be replaced by silence.

[snip}