From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 864
Date: 2000-01-11
You need no statistics to see that words from any protolanguage get shorter and shorter in the daughter languages -- the ease of articulation leads to the "erosion" of the phonetic substance of words. Note how Latin Augustus > French août, pronounced [u], or English hla:f-weard > hlaford > loverd > lord. This is just enthropy at work. But you are absolutely right about the compensatory process which produces new, longer words by affixation and compounding, so that the overall length of an average word does not vary much over the centuries or millennia, and may increase as well as decrease within the bounds of reason. Piotr.I completely agree. Do you think that erosion is faster when more foreign influences are at work upon an language? The erosion, eg, seems to be much faster in French>Spanish>Italian. Is the erosion generally faster at the borders of a language (or group of mutually understandalbe languages)?Marc