Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Nialler · 01-27-2003, 08:38 AM

... the French word is "Guepe"

Bumble Bee Tuna · 01-27-2003, 05:57 PM

Yeah. Yeah I know.
Did you know I had the titular line in "Out of Africa"?

Gurdur · 01-27-2003, 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jan Haugland
....
I would also suggest that language changes more rapidly when:

1) there is no written version that tends to conserve language, at least if literacy is widespread

Bit difficult to test this, given the lack of records for non-written languages,

Quote:

2) groups are small. Small communities allow for faster changes and more complex grammar.

Eh, you're equating change=complex grammar. Why ?
Can work both ways.

Quote:

In European languages weak verbs are typically modern words, while strong verbs are old. The older a word is, the more complex and irregaluar grammar (e.g. go - went - gone; and the word for "to be" is highly irregalur in most languages as far as I know).

Small language groups can preserve arcane grammar, while the common languages of larger communities called for more regularity

eh, aren't you contradicting yourself in your example ?
In English, the strong and replacement verbs are typically those best known to a speaker --- those most used. Effects of repetition; and English is far from being a "small language group", yet it's preserving "arcane grammar".

The Indo-European Armenian, not very large, seems to have, IIRC, adopted a system of case endings for nouns from the non-Indo-European Turkish.

Mind you, your statement is perfectly correct for some small isolated communities ---- Basque groups in the more mountainous areas preserve older Basque grammatical features, for example.

But also, it isn't just say inflecting grammar, or whatever; for example, English makes up in complexity of syntax what it loses in complexity of morphology.

01-27-2003, 08:38 AM	#71
Nialler Banned Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Paris Posts: 8,473	And of course... ... the French word is "Guepe"

01-27-2003, 05:57 PM	#72
Bumble Bee Tuna Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Middletown, CT Posts: 7,333	I know this is inappropriate, but I just have to post my obscure reference Yeah. Yeah I know. Did you know I had the titular line in "Out of Africa"?

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