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Why are there so few isolating languages? | ||
Tags: Morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hughes007 Diglot Newbie Spain Joined 5525 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Italian Studies: EnglishB2 | Message 1 of 17 29 April 2011 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as I know, there are two types of languages in the world: Analytic or isolating languages (in which words are hardly ever inflected and people just tend to use particles to complete what other languages do by inflection) and Synthetic languages (those which rely on the use of morphemes and so, words inflection is mandatory).
Most languages are synthetic either agglutinative (such us Euskara, Finnish, Turkish or Japanese) or fusional (romance languages, Germanic languages, etc...). Only a few (Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer or Thai) are isolating. It is kind of frustrating that those analytic languages are, for some reason, pretty hard ; for example, Chinese, which apparently has a rather easy grammar but on the other hand, there are noun classifiers, a fiddly honorific system, tones and, of course, a hell of characters to write it. As everybody know, Thai, Burmese, Khmer or Vietnamese are not significantly easier. Well, I don't mean I want all languages to have a supposedly easy grammar as analytic languages should have but, why are so few ones? Why human tend to construct harder languages like synthetic languages are rather than languages based on particles and invariable words? I think that, maybe, Chinese was never meant to be synthetic because of the use of characters which hinder the possibility of a word to be inflected. But I'd like to know your point of view, what do you think? Edited by hughes007 on 29 April 2011 at 2:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes  Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 2 of 17 29 April 2011 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Language is spoken so the written form only reflects what the spoken form of the language is. Therefore, it
shouldn't matter what sort of writing system a language has because people will adapt it to match what they say. Chinese could become synthetic and its characters would have to adapt to it but it doesn't so the characters don't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 17 29 April 2011 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
Leaving aside the main question, characters are not a barrier to inflection. The spoken language came before the written. Japanese borrowed characters from Chinese, is not isolating, and has another writing system for the inflections (not only for the inflections, but it's generally used for them). Old Japanese writing used characters for the inflections as well; it's possible to do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 4 of 17 29 April 2011 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's simply because, as isolating languages are spoken over generations, commonly used words will be slurred and minimized until they run into the words next to them, eventually evolving into affixes. In order for a language to resist this trend, I think it needs certain unique phonetic properties which keep words distinct and make it hard to run them together in a way that would be understood. I suspect tones play a big part in that, but Khmer is non-tonal, so it can't be the only factor. Edited by Levi on 29 April 2011 at 4:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 17 29 April 2011 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
The problem is that real languages (rather than artificial ones) are NOT constructed. Rather, they mutate over time. There isn't a deliberate logic behind them, so there isn't much point in asking why they are so illogical. Of course, we are always asking "why?" and we always cringe when we come across new "illogical" things. I certainly always get frustrated when learning a new language and come across some aspect that is easier in, say, Mandarin, or French, or English. I always ask myself why it is so complicated in this new language and wouldn't it be better if it were simplified. Each time, though, I have to kick myself to stop asking why, and accept there isn't an answer other than "because languages mutate over time due to all kinds of influences". A great example of this is that I was talking (in Czech) to a Russian woman about English, and she asked "Why is the grammar to English so complicated?" To her, Czech grammar is both simple and logical, since it is heavily inflected (with lots of noun cases) and has verbal aspect just like Russian. English (for the most part) does not have these concepts and so is (to her) overly complicated. The very things about Czech and Russian that cause English speakers to go crazy are the very things that this lady found comforting. Edited by Splog on 29 April 2011 at 6:52am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 17 29 April 2011 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
This is overly simplifying things. Writing can surely have significant effects on the spoken language, if the population is largely literate or if the written language has high prestige. The position of "language is spoken" would rule out Classical Chinese as a language completely, as there is no evidence it has ever been a spoken language (and it surely wasn't during most of Chinese history). Classical Chinese couldn't possibly evolve to become non-isolating, as it was only written and written with characters. Was this enough to influence Mandarin and other Chinese languages to stay isolating? I don't know, I find it possible but probably not enough. But if not then we need to find another mechanism as, as far as I know, none of the more than a dozen very distinct languages of China ever "grew out of" its isolating nature. Why is this? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5524 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 7 of 17 29 April 2011 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Cambodian/Khmer is related to Vietnamese, has a script, and doesn't have any tones IIRC. Does have honorifics though. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 29 April 2011 at 7:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 8 of 17 29 April 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I read something this yesterday that said that due to Chinese evolution (the simplification of the phonetic system)
has made the language polysyllabic. Once words were made up from one syllable, but when the phonetic system made several of them into homophones it became an impossible solution (thus: i can represent 67 words, and even if you split them up in the 4 tones it’s still many…). So, the chinese people in their spoken language put together synonymes, thereby explaining which of, say, all the 12 i’s with the same tone they ment. So the i was but together with the synonyme shü into i-shü. The same evolution caused the need for noun classifiers/counters, so, the listener can by the counter get a grasp of which word is ment. Also, due to this evolution an educated Chinese can read and understand classical Chinese, but, if s/he read it aloud to someone as educated, s/he would not be able to understand it unless s/he be looking at the text at the same time. (source http://chineseideographs.com/soundsymbolinchi00karluoft.pdf) It might be old, however, it says the same thing as the article about old Old Chinese in the book ‹The Ancient languages of Asia and the Americas› by Wodard and what wa said by the professor in sinology who lectured about ancient Chinese in my course - so it’s not something I’ve made up :P 1 person has voted this message useful |
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