Re: IE & linguistic complexity

Marc and David, regarding

> >This question of language simplification fascinates me and as usual

I

> >present more questions than answers.
> >While I can see that the theory that contact between speakers of
> >similar tongues such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse would lead to the
> >simplification of English, why did the simplification process
> >continue long after Old Norse ceased to be spoken in England? And

if

> >we were to take Iberia as an example, surely Latin was too far
> >removed from the Celtic, Basque and later, Arabic languages for

this

> >process of simplification to take place?

I think a certain amount of language simplification can take place in
such circumstances. I am thinking of the language of the Riau Islands
in Indonesia, which, under contact with Arabic, Indian, Chinese,
Portugese and Dutch evolved into Pasar Malay and hence into Bahasa
Malayu and Bahasa Indonesia. This enabled it to become a lingua
franca for the entire Archipelago, particularly for the santri
traders.

> Yes, I think the distinction you make between understandable &
> ununderstandable languages is very important. Mixing of

understandable

> languages ("dialects") leads to simplification of inflection IMO.

This is

> seen in English (Anglon, Saxon, Frisian, Norse), Dutch &

Scandinavian, much

> more than in High German. I don't know enough of Scandinavian to

know

> whether it follows this "rule" (trade? Vikings?), but it's clear in

Dutch:

> the standard language moved from Bruges (West-Flemish, a dialect

originally

> close to English) to Antwerp to Amsterdam (large emigration of

influential

> people from Brabant to Holland in the 16th century). The effects may

be

> visible only after centuries, eg, Hollandic "jij" (Engl. "you") has

always

> been used in the spoken language, but in the beginning of this

century

> written Dutch still used Brabantic "gij".
>
> >If it were then to be argued
> >that the languages did not have to be 'close' then why do we still
> >find languages which retain a great deal of their complexity, but
> >whose speakers must have had a great deal of contact with their
> >neighbours; examples that spring to mind are the Baltic languages
> >whose speakers would have had contact with Germanic, Slavonic and
> >even non-IE speakers such as Finnish. Perhaps Slavonic also falls
> >into this catagory and I would have expected this simplification
> >process to have taken place at the fringes of the Slavonic world
> >where there would have been interaction with Iranian, and later,
> >Greek, Germanic et al speakers. However Bulgarian appears to be
> >pretty unique in displaying any signs of this process.
> >If anyone could throw any light on these matters I would be very
> >grateful.

It is interesting that in the cases used - English, Dutch and Malay,
these all were important trade languages from very early on. They
were languages of the market place, of commerce, and aimed for
intelligibility to outsiders (important in establishing commercial
raport). In the case of the Baltic languages, these were languages of
the land andof the peasantry, concerned with local cohesion, and
maintaining identity against a Germanic, Swedish or Slavic overlord.
Mutual unintelligibility would have been valued in such cases, as it
would foster a sense of "us" versus "you".

> IMO, it's not at the fringes, but the central dialects (that undergo

most

> influences from neighbouring dialects) that lose most inflection,

eg,

> English & Hollandic. I think contacts between mutually

understandable

> "dialects" (large-scale mixings after migrations?) are important for

these

> "simplification" processes.

Obviously trade is a flow from the centre to the periphery and back
again. However, its societal impact is highest, I suspect, in centres
of high population rather than in the rural back-blocks where trade
may be limited to an occasional itinerant tinker.

Language can be put to different social purposes and this determines a
number of factors about the way in which a language subsequently
evolves. Along the Phrao and Menam Rivers in Thailand, for instance
it is considered that these areas are almost exclusively Thai
speaking. This is certainly true in the market-place, in government,
in schooling and in almost all public fora. Yet amongst close
aquaintances, at home, in intimate circumstances, in a certain % of
the population, one finds Mon is the current language, and has been
for thousands of years.

Thus Thai is the language which has undergone a degree of
simplification (although still very hard for non Daic speakers),
whereas Mon has managed to maintain a degree of original complexity.

Hope this helps

John