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Would it be even possible to lose cases? | ||
Tags: Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4852 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 1 of 35 10 October 2011 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Would it be even possible for a modern language possessing grammatical cases to lose all
of it's cases? ex: Polish Around 1000 AC or 1500AC would be OK, the school system su****, there were no movies, not everybody could read, but nowadays I find it impossible, do you have a different perspective? Polish becoming absolutely analytical :S Edited by Fasulye on 10 October 2011 at 6:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 35 10 October 2011 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably, it can. All the languages are changing, despite total literacy.
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| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5071 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 3 of 35 10 October 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Look at Bulgarian, exactly that happened. If Polish became absolutely analytical, it would be similar to Bulgarian.
Actually, cases were preserved because of a lack of cultural interaction. Cases were lost in Bulgarian because interaction with so many neighboring languages and peoples caused the declensional endings to become confused with one another as new words were added and grammatical ideas from neighboring languages were adapted to Bulgarian. As a result, the cases were dumped in favor of a stricter word order and prepositions. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5616 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 4 of 35 10 October 2011 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any examples of analytical languages that began using cases?
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5604 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 5 of 35 10 October 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think, in Conemara Irish the genitive is weakening as the last of the five cases the languages originally had. But the written language and the other dialects have still at least three cases (plus some remnants of the dative). Edited by Cabaire on 10 October 2011 at 11:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 35 10 October 2011 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
This isn't a perfect example, but an example of an isolating structure becoming synthetic could be in the development of certain postpositions in Old Hungarian which have become suffixes in modern Hungarian. Old Hungarian: feheuuaru rea meneh hohu utu rea Literal English: To Fehérvár going onto the military road Modern Hungarian: Fehérvárra menő hadútra More idiomatic English: Onto the military road leading to Fehérvár The old postposition rea has become the current suffix for the sublative case (-ra/-re). Note also how the ancestor of modern "hadút" is "hohu utu" (i.e. 'military road' combined as one word 'militaryroad') I haven't been able to find an example of a predominantly isolating or analytic language becoming a predominantly synthetic (fusional, agglutinative, polysynthetic) one. Even Hungarian and its ancestors have been treated as predominantly agglutinative (i.e. a sub-type of a synthetic language). 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 7 of 35 11 October 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
How do they say? Teach Bhrian? Timpeall na tír? Chun obair? Sú úll? Tá me ag ithe ull? Could you give some proofs of this process? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 35 11 October 2011 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
This is exactly it. It's not too far fetched to suggest that English might lose some of its remaining inflection through the massive number of learners -- it's very common for learners to drop the -s from verbs in the third person singular. Will TV and the press prevent this? Well, there's already plenty of non-native-English press, the big question is whether we're going to see non-native-English cinema in the years to come. I think the thing that protects Polish most is the fact the strength of English as a lingua franca -- everyone who trades across borders is increasingly relying on English, so there's not the same amount of non-native interference with the language. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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