Re: Evolution of Language

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
Bob Cunningham wrote: 

I don't think it's right to say "all", though.  I think an
important element in language evolution is a tendency to
consciously choose easier ways to say things.


That's certainly true but these ways would be wrong to those who cling
to the old ways. Like I was saying, trivial.


There is also an opposing tendency to make things more complex in order
to make meaning clearer. As a good example, look at how in modern
English the verb "to have" is evolving so that it is often replaced by
"have got". How could it be "easier" to add an extra word?

I suspect
that the elaborate inflections of earlier versions of
languages were not lost due to error, but rather because
people saw no need for them and dropped them.


There's no reason to believe that highly inflected languages are an
earlier state of language, the end of which is more modern. There is no
objective reason to include anything within the conjugated verb form yet
we often see person, number, tense, mood and other aspects attached or
otherwise made a part of these forms.


The inflections would have evolved from what were once individual
words. In modern English the words that do the job that inflections
did in early Indo-European occur before the verb stem. Consider how
"gonna-" might be considered a prefix that forms the future tense as
an example. Given time and no literature that reminds us of what the
"correct" form is, the tense system which English constructs
from auxiliary verbs could easily evolve in an elaborate system of
prefixes.

Matthew Huntbach
.

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