LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.11 (06) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 11 March - Volume 05
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2011.03.11 (05) [EN-NL]

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Vital (i.e., not already highly moribund) languages have ways of “repairing”
themselves in cases of what we consider loss.


Yep. A language cannot kill itself by morphological erosion. If the
morphological forms are important they wouldn't erode in the first place. In
the case of Low Saxon they weren't important because people could use "ik
heff packt" as an alternative. It's not uncommon that languages have no past
tense at all. If they need to mark that something happened in the past they
just place an adverb or a particle in the sentence to mark it. Works
perfectly.

Marcus Buck



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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: Grammar

As a result of “classical indoctrination,” it is common to assume that
morphological complexity is superior wherever morphologically complex
“classical” languages are celebrated and taught as transmitters of
“classical” literature of a supposedly golden age.

This is so for example in the “West” with its Latin and Greek heritage,
Southern Asia with its Sanskrit heritage, and the Arabic-speaking world with
its shared tradition of morphologically more complex Qur’anic Arabic. Is
there anything you can say in Latin or Ancient Greek that you can’t say in
Catalan, French, Dutch, Welsh or Kashubian? Is there anything you can say in
Sanskrit that you can’t say in Hindi, Bengali, Garwhali, Oriya or Romany? Is
there anything you can say in Qur’anic Arabic that you can’t say in
Maghrebi, Egyptian, Levantine, Hassaniya, Gulf or Maltese Arabic? Can you
say things better in morphologically complex Old Norse than in the
morphologically highly simplified Modern Scandinavian varieties? No! On the
contrary: the modern forms cope much better with life in our time ... and
they are a heck of a lot easier to learn.


Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA



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