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What causes languages to simplify? | ||
Tags: Morphology | History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 33 01 July 2010 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's not laziness, it's simply a matter of repetition. If you do not hear (or read) an irregular form frequently enough, you will rely on the standard grammatical rule to build that word form. And if this error is made by enough people, it becomes a new standard. I personally think that following factors can cause a language to become more regular: - increased mobility and permeability of social groups - trends that favour a formerly less used (and so more regular) form or tense over a formerly widely used (and more irregular) form or tense - you can see that with German's 'Perfekt' and 'Präteritum' tenses -changes in the pronunciation that lead to homonymous or similar sounding forms or tenses, which may lead to additions to make clear what was mentioned (these might be simpler or more complicated, haha) - non-native speakers 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 26 of 33 03 July 2010 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Tocharian, now extinct, apparently serves
as a counterexample to the simplification trend in fusional languages. It inherited only three cases from Proto- Indo-European but developed six new cases of its own. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6440 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 27 of 33 03 July 2010 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Isolating language are simpler in terms of morphology, it doesn't make them any less expressive than any other. Take Chinese at one end of the scale, and Latin at the other. On relies heavily of inflection, the other not at all. But were the Romans stupid because they didn't speak a polysynthetic language like the Eskimos? Of course not. That's absolutely absurd. "Primitive" people don't have correspondingly "primitive" languages, in fact, for a speaker of English learning the language of people we consider "uneducated" and "primitive" would be far more difficult than Latin. Anyone who has tried to learn Chinese will surely realise that isolating does not mean easy. Different, but not easy.
One cannot just affirm that languages get simpler. Languages change, expressing things in different ways. In Latin there is no need to use ego much, eo means "I go" just as much as the English phrase does. Just because we use two words and Caesar used one is irrelevant, it accomplishes the same goal just by a different root. On the other hand, English under the influence of the Normans has an enormous amount of roots compared to German, what would probably be considered "more complicated", although German is growing more isolating. We play a game, use the same root for both, same with ask a question etc. As already eluded to, English verbal morphology is as good an example as any. We express a number of aspects that cannot be expressed in German, and even more tenses (the future is not used much in German, the present being a non-past, similar to Old English. Even that change, from occasionally using a future tense to always could be construed as getting more complex. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| novemberain Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5845 days ago 59 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC1, Italian Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 28 of 33 04 July 2010 at 7:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Good point! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5923 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 29 of 33 05 July 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I recall hearing that "Dove" is actually a rare case of an irregular verb forming. "Dived" is, according to Wiktionary, Grammarphobia, and the American Heritage Dictionary, the earlier, original form. Dove is a recent innovation (and regionally specific - apparently US Americans and Canadians are more likely to say "She dove down" compared to UKers, although some regional dialects of the UK use "dove", too). So this is actually the opposite case: a language forming an irregular verb over time! Another example is wear-wore (originally werede) and spit-spat (originally spitede). Can anyone else think of a case like this, where a regular verb became irregular? Sources: http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/08/lighted-vs-lit-and -dived-vs-dove.html http://tenfootstop.blogspot.com/2005/10/dived-or-dove-which- is-correct-from-dr.html http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dive 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5317 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 30 of 33 05 July 2010 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I dont know if this counts, but Ill read novels and always see "he *lighted* a candle" or
whatever, but never do I see lit which is how I and most people Ive ever heard say it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 31 of 33 12 July 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Widespread use as a lingua franca or L2 may cause some simplification. Koine Greek is reputedly simpler than Classical Greek (I am not an expert on it but that is what I have read).
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 32 of 33 08 August 2010 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Being cut off from the original standardised language by geographical distance might also cause a language to simplify. Afrikaans got rid of some complex features of Dutch, for example, even though it is still relatively close to Dutch.
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