Hakan:
But what other words should we use if we want to discuss growth and
development ("inflectionally challenged"?) or if we want to compare the
structure of one language with the structure of another?
But now you're talking about _features_ of a language, not the language
itself. In this case, I think "simple" and "complex" can be used
appropriately. We can say that Samoan's phonology is "simpler" than in
English because of the difference in numbers of phonemes. Therefore, in this
case, the "simplicity" is _measurable_. That's where the difference lies.
Features can be simpler in comparison (measurable/definable) but not whole
languages (immeasurable/abstract).
>Have you seen an essay by Babaev called Structural Variability of
>Indo->European Morphology? He shows that the number of inflections must
>have >been very few in the earliest stage of the language,
I agree. I think the declensional system four/five thousand years before
Common IE, was entirely done through seperate postpositions (except for the
ancient accusative suffix *-m).
>According to him, language development over a long period of time >looks
>like a sinusoid curve. If this is true, there has been time for >a lot of
>peaks and valleys during the tens of thousands of years that >humans have
>been speaking. Sanskrit or Proto-IE may not have been the >first peak on
>that curve.
I agree that there were lots of peaks and valleys in the past (boy, lemme
tell ya!) but I would say that the sinusoid curve is better described as a
"stock market chart", full of erratic jumps and drops with no evident
pattern. The reasons for the loss or gain in inflections are unexplainable
and beautifully human.
Of course, the question is whether we're experiencing a bull or bear
market... :)
- gLeN
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