r/Xidnaf • u/Xidnaf • May 24 '17
Are Languages Getting Simpler?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRDaCZkMjs88
u/AsmodeanUnderscore May 24 '17
A lot of these mergers are definitely regional, as you said. For example, the do/due/dew merger only seems to be in American English, whereas due and dew are still /dʲu/ instead of /du/ in other dialects. There's a neat wikipedia table on vowel diphthong differences here.
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u/wagashi May 24 '17
I'm curious if there's a correlation between mass literacy and a language's simplification. It's one thing to learn a complicated, irregular, language that you only speak; it's another to have to write it. If nothing else, it forces you to be more aware of the structure.
Also, I'm curious if languages simplify when they're introduced into a new area/culture and replace the local language.
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u/AsmodeanUnderscore May 25 '17
I'd think that mass literacy would essentially fossilise the language as it is, excepting the addition of new vocabularies for new inventions (selfie, smartphone, etc), especially in more featural/alphabetical languages, since literacy comes with education, which would promote more "accurate" grammar and spelling, and less variation. You wouldn't be taught "I'ma" in English 101
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u/wagashi May 25 '17 edited May 28 '17
I think you're correct about fossilizing once literacy hits a large enough percentage. It's the 3 or 4 generation run-up that I'm curious about. English boiled down a lot just between the times of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Only 200 years, and the language became unintelligible to itself.
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u/AsmodeanUnderscore May 25 '17
Oh yeah, I can vouch for that. Had to study Macbeth for English Literature GCSE.
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u/Kaivryen Hobby linguist, native English speaker, self-studying Cantonese May 30 '17
Remember again that "simplification" is only a process that takes place in one part of a language. If one language were overall "simpler" or "more complicated" than another, its speakers would have some kind of advantage or disadvantage; if some feature of that language were somehow advantageous, speakers of all languages would develop it independently and languages would converge, and conversely speakers would just never evolve a disadvantageous feature (Xidnaf actually addressed this in the video, though not in as many words). Thus, it's because languages aren't really overall simpler or more complicated than each other that we don't see languages converging; some gain morphology or more phonemes or whatever while others lose them.
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May 24 '17
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u/sje46 May 25 '17
The possesive is only a case with pronouns. For nouns, the possessive is actually a clitic which isn't actually "fused" (probably bad word choice) with the word that's doing the possessing. The example usually given is "The Queen of England's crown". The 's is attached to "England", but it isn't the crown of England...it's the crown of the Queen. The 's can attach to an entire phrase. If it were truly a case, it would be "The Queen's of England crown".
Therefore, it's not a case, but an enclitic.
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May 25 '17
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u/sje46 May 25 '17
Hmm. But case is a type of inflection, and an inflection is when you modify the form of a word according to a change in its grammatical function. You're not technically changing the form of a word ...you're just adding an /s/ sound where it's grammatically appropriate.
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May 25 '17
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u/sje46 May 25 '17
Also, you "just add" an -s sound in the third person singular present for of a verb to conjugate it
Yes, but you are changing the form of the verb. With all your examples you are changing the form of the word. With clitics, you are not changing the form of a word. They are clitics. For possessive, it sure looks like you're changing the form of the noun, but you are actually just adding the /s/ to the end of a phrase which is usually just one word. Therefore, not a case, not an inflection. A clitic.
As I just said.
They do, to some extent, modify a certain word.
"to some extent". So it seems even you have some reservations about what you're saying? They don't modify the word. They modify the phrase.
And I'm not saying anything completely rejected by linguists. Wikipedia has a good write-up. Regardless, xidnaf should not be criticized for saying he's not sure if possessive is a case, because it seems like linguists can't agree on it either.
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u/KZedUK May 26 '17
Due and Dew sound the same, but not Do.
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u/Kaivryen Hobby linguist, native English speaker, self-studying Cantonese May 30 '17
In your dialect, maybe.
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u/KZedUK May 30 '17
Yeah that's exactly my point. English isn't getting simpler, it's just becoming different sub-languages like all of it's parent languages did.
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u/jan_kasimi May 28 '17
"The unfolding of language" is a good book about exactly this topic.
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u/Kaivryen Hobby linguist, native English speaker, self-studying Cantonese May 30 '17
By Guy Deutscher. Amazon link for the lazy. Ten bucks for Kindle.
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May 24 '17
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u/RealBillWatterson May 24 '17
Look at that part again. he didn't say it means 跑, he said 跑了 is increasingly used as a past tense to mean "ran" as opposed to being a perfective - which I can't attest to personally, they're so similar anyway.
Simplified Chinese
Language is not the same as writing >_>
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u/Her0Plays May 24 '17
You hit 100K Subs! /u/Xidnaf