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Language complexity
Brennus,
I've heard that Spanish priests taught in Amerindian languages with the Native people. Obviously, they try to convince people, so using the people's native language may have a psychological effect! (I think it does)
Xatufan,
Hello / hola Re: "I've heard that Spanish priests taught in Amerindian languages with the Native people" Occasionally, perhaps. However, most Catholic priests who taught in native languages both in the America's and elsewhere in the world were Jesuits from what I've read. Most Jesuits were not Spanish (often they were French, Alsatian, German or Italian) even though the founder of the order, Bishop Loyola, was a Spanish Basque. Some people say that the Catholic Church made a huge mistake not listening to the Jesuits and is still paying for it.
Gjones2: "So the connection between evolution towards grammatical simplicity and the rise of large human communities seems to fit. What remains to explain, though, is why. Why should farmers or city dwellers who are used to seeing more people use fewer inflections than hunters and gatherers (assuming that they are more isolated)? What's really causing this loss of inflections? I don't know much about pidgin languages but assume that they tend to be inflectionally simple. Is that related to what we're seeing? The major languages that are getting more simple have usually had some contact and influence from other languages. I don't know, though, if the process that produces pidgin languages is sufficient to explain what seems to be happening to the languages of very large groups of people."
I would not say that it is the universal norm for languages becoming spoken by large groups or people to become simplified. Some languages, like English, all Romance languages, Greek or Chinese have become greatly simplified grammatically, others, such as Russian, Arabic or Hindi have, on the other hand, have preserved a fairly complex syntactic structure (noun cases, verb conjugations, etc.), although they are spoken by very large groups of people and represent a highly sophisticated culture. On the other hand, let me consider the point that "the major languages that are getting more simple have usually had some contact and influence from other languages". This is true for English, and also for Romance languages, because both languages have been subjected to a serious influence from another language spoken by a dominant group (for Romance languages, this was the language of the respective Germanic tribes who conquered the former Roman teritories, and for English, of course, the Norman Conquest and the rule of the Angevin/Plantagenet dynasty). The curious point here is that the language of the natives was in some way acquired by the Germanic invaders, and simplified in the process, or in the case of English, Old English was simplified due to a combined effect of official disuse and an influence by first Norman French, and later by French as used at the royal court (maybe Greg could tell more precisely which dialect of French this was). My point is that simplification seems to occur mostly because of a dominant invading group which exerts a decisive influence on the native population's language in one way or the other. Another example to support the point is that of Bulgarian, which is the most "pidginized" of all Slavic languages, having lost most of its case system or inflections characteristic to other languages of its group. This was doubtlessly due to the fact that the native population was subjugated by Bulghar Turks or Onogurs, who imposed their rule (and incidentally, their name) on the subjugated population, but failed to impose their language. Instead, they acquired the native Slavic dialect spoken there, which got simplified in the process. In the case of Russian, Arabic or Hindi (I am not really sure of this last one), which also spread to peoples originally speaking other languages, the language and culture itself was an important element of subjugation, and the process of this was also more oppressive, so a decisive contact with the language of the subjugated population was prevented (notice how the minority languages in Russia are slowly disappearing due to the fact that acquiring Russian is a means of becoming "upwardly mobile" or economically relevant). This is also true for the English, Spanish or Portuguese-dominated native populations of America and Australia, by the way - contact with those peoples has not significantly altered the language of the conquerors, although in Latin America, the native and the invading populations have even blended into a group which has preserved a great deal of the native customs but has acquired the conquerors' language (I mean the Mestizos, of course).
By the way, it is also interesting to observe that Indo-European languages generally tend to be less and less synthetic as we go from East to West.
Just for the record, Gjones2, Trawick and myself are two different individuals, so where you've quoted "Travis" in this thread before you really mean Trawick. Everyone else also should understand that the words quoted as being mine by you here are specifically not mine.
>>On the other hand, let me consider the point that "the major languages that are getting more simple have usually had some contact and influence from other languages". This is true for English, and also for Romance languages, because both languages have been subjected to a serious influence from another language spoken by a dominant group (for Romance languages, this was the language of the respective Germanic tribes who conquered the former Roman teritories, and for English, of course, the Norman Conquest and the rule of the Angevin/Plantagenet dynasty). The curious point here is that the language of the natives was in some way acquired by the Germanic invaders, and simplified in the process, or in the case of English, Old English was simplified due to a combined effect of official disuse and an influence by first Norman French, and later by French as used at the royal court (maybe Greg could tell more precisely which dialect of French this was). My point is that simplification seems to occur mostly because of a dominant invading group which exerts a decisive influence on the native population's language in one way or the other.<<
Actually, I would strongly dispute such in the case of English. If anything, what had an influence on English was not the Normans but rather the Norse settlers who came before them, who came in far more substantial numbers than the Normans, who most likely numbered just a few thousand as a whole in England, and who actually mixed with the preexisting Anglo-Saxon population, unlike the Norman invaders, who were primarily noble and who did not have much direct interaction with the general (both West and North) Germanic-speaking population. And even at that, it is clear that there has been just a general trend towards analysis throughout the Germanic languages, as shown by how almost all the Germanic languages today save Icelandic and Faroese are more analytic than the "old" Germanic languages, which is generally due to a fixed initial or root-initial forestressed combined with a general tendency towards vowel reduction causing an overally tendency towards the loss of word-final inflectional endings. In the case of English, it is just that contact between Old English and Old Norse-speaking populations accelerated such in English through increasing the loss of inflection (as inflection is one major feature of languages which tends to be imperfectly learned by non-native speakers), just like how contact between Old Swedish and Old Danish-speaking populations and Middle Low Saxon-speaking populations accelerated such in Swedish and Danish, which are quite analytic today when contrasted with the likes of standard Hochdeutsch and Icelandic. However, such strong contact phenomena are not necessary for such, as shown by the example of Dutch, which has become about just as analytic in actual speech as standard Swedish or Danish are, despite having not been subjected to contact as strong as such with Old English and Old Norse or the East North Germanic languages and Middle Low Saxon.
Travis: "If anything, what had an influence on English was not the Normans but rather the Norse settlers who came before them, who came in far more substantial numbers than the Normans, who most likely numbered just a few thousand as a whole in England, and who actually mixed with the preexisting Anglo-Saxon population, unlike the Norman invaders, who were primarily noble and who did not have much direct interaction with the general (both West and North) Germanic-speaking population."
I agree that the Norse settlers probably had a more direct influence on English than did the Normans. What would be useful in this respect is to trace the Scandinavian influence in contemporary texts. On the other hand, it was not the Norman Conquest per se but the prolonged contact with French during the Angevins/Plantagenets which gave English its present character (the huge influx of French loanwords and a partial influence of French syntax on English). It is also evident that when Middle English emerged as a literary and official language following the eclipse of Old English, it was already analytic almost to the extent to which Modern English is now (except for some features, such as the use of the perfective prefix "y-", the verbal suffix "-en", and some others, but its syntax was rather analytic). Maybe I was wrong emphasizing too much that the simplification in a particular language is usually due to a disruptive influence resulting from the contact with an ethnic group speaking another language, which is in a dominant position for some time. However, such influence is not to be overlooked in some cases, and the same is true of the influence of the substratum on a particular language (the contact with another language that was used at an area before a particular group settled there). I think Bulgarian is a good example of this, as is Hiberno-English, which was profoundly influenced by Irish Gaelic syntax).
>"...so where you've quoted "Travis" in this thread before you really mean Trawick." [Travis]
Sorry.
>What remains to explain, though, is why....The major languages that are getting more simple have usually had some contact and influence from other languages. I don't know, though, if the process that produces pidgin languages is sufficient to explain what seems to be happening to the languages of very large groups of people. [Gjones2]
>...simplification seems to occur mostly because of a dominant invading group which exerts a decisive influence on the native population's language in one way or the other. [Easterner] That does seem to make sense. Good idea.
>...Russian, Arabic or Hindi have, on the other hand, have preserved a fairly complex syntactic structure (noun cases, verb conjugations, etc.) [Easterner]
They are complex, but in the case of Hindi anyway, some simplification seems to have taken place. Its nouns have lost most of the Sanskrit cases. Sanskrit: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative (also ten declensions). Hindi: just the direct and the oblique cases (don't know how many declensions). http://www.haryana-online.com/sanskrit.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi Classical Arabic nouns have three cases (nominative, genitive and accusative) and two genders, which makes it complex but not extremely so. I don't know if the language ever had more, or if modern dialects are less complex. Russian with six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and locative or prepositional) does sound rather complex. Maybe there's a tendency for simplification to happen when there's a loss of isolation, but its degree will vary depending on other factors. How about the opposite situation? Is anyone aware of a language that had just one or two cases but then developed six or seven within historical times (not merely adopted them from another language but developed them)? If isolation is needed to create more highly inflected languages, then we'd expect to see few if any of them created during historical times.
Easterner : « D'un autre côté, les caractéristiques actuelles de l'anglais — dues à l'afflux massif d'emprunts français et à l'influence partielle de la syntaxe française sur l'anglais — sont issues de la présence durable du français au cours de la période angevine (Plantagenêts), et de la non la conquête normande par elle-même. Le caractère analytique du moyen-anglais, alors très proche de celui de l'anglais moderne, est déjà clairement acquis au moment où il se pose comme idiome officiel et langue écrite, suite à l'effacement du vieil-anglais — sauf sur ces points : préfixation en <y> du participe, suffixation verbale en <en>, et d'autres, mais la syntaxe demeure analytique. »
Oui le vieil-anglais et le haut moyen-anglais diffèrent essentiellement du moyen-anglais tardif par l'impact de la francisation (directe ou via le latin) sur la société et sa production écrite. Le plus intéressant c'est que la diffusion des français — anciens français capétien et outremanchais plus les autres formes d'Oïl — comme langues secondes incontournables au sein des couches socialement inférieures de la population (marchands, bourgeoisie, administration royale, clergé etc) est contemporaine de la raréfaction graduelle des francophones maternels (déjà très minoritaires) sur le sol des Îles britanniques. C'est une phénomène de langues en contact où la langue de prestige exerce toute son influence alors qu'elle est dépourvue de toute assise significative en termes de locuteurs maternels. C'est ce qui distingue l'impact de l'ancien français de l'influence norroise. L'ancien français d'outre-Manche a survécu à sa disparition attendue en se fondant littéralement dans une langue-hôte : le moyen-anglais — une sorte de symbiose.
>>Travis: "If anything, what had an influence on English was not the Normans but rather the Norse settlers who came before them, who came in far more substantial numbers than the Normans, who most likely numbered just a few thousand as a whole in England, and who actually mixed with the preexisting Anglo-Saxon population, unlike the Norman invaders, who were primarily noble and who did not have much direct interaction with the general (both West and North) Germanic-speaking population."
I agree that the Norse settlers probably had a more direct influence on English than did the Normans. What would be useful in this respect is to trace the Scandinavian influence in contemporary texts. On the other hand, it was not the Norman Conquest per se but the prolonged contact with French during the Angevins/Plantagenets which gave English its present character (the huge influx of French loanwords and a partial influence of French syntax on English). It is also evident that when Middle English emerged as a literary and official language following the eclipse of Old English, it was already analytic almost to the extent to which Modern English is now (except for some features, such as the use of the perfective prefix "y-", the verbal suffix "-en", and some others, but its syntax was rather analytic).<< If anything, what the Norman Conquest *did* do is remove the preexisting formal literary form of Old English, exposing changes that had already occurred in various dialects of Old English that had not been shown in literary Old English; this is shown by how the earliest Middle English texts are already clearly distinct from Old English, and by how North Germanic words only start showing up in writing in Middle English texts, even though they must have already been borrowed into dialects of Old English a good amount of time before then. >>Maybe I was wrong emphasizing too much that the simplification in a particular language is usually due to a disruptive influence resulting from the contact with an ethnic group speaking another language, which is in a dominant position for some time. However, such influence is not to be overlooked in some cases, and the same is true of the influence of the substratum on a particular language (the contact with another language that was used at an area before a particular group settled there). I think Bulgarian is a good example of this, as is Hiberno-English, which was profoundly influenced by Irish Gaelic syntax).<< In the case of English, it is clear that contact *did* have a very significant impact, as simply shown by the words "are" and "they", which are most definitely of North Germanic origin, and furthermore demonstrate the sheer degree of North Germanic influence on English, due to they showing that such influence managed to reach even grammar words, which are usually the words in languages which are the most stable and are the least affected by contact phenomena. This is further shown by how much of the vocabulary of Old Norse origin in English is not literary vocabulary but rather everyday vocabulary, unlike many words of French origin in English, which are clearly literary or at least formal in nature. It is just that many people misplace outside influence on English at the time of the transition from Old English to Middle English, identifying it with the Norman Conquest rather than with Norse settlement in the British Isles.
Travis,
Your post was very enlightening, thanks! The Norse influence on English is not so well-known to the wider public as the Normand/French one.
Ich stimme mit Easterner zu : vielen Dank Travis, uns über die phasenverschobene Einführung altnordischen Wörter (zwischen mündlichem Altenglisch und geschriebenem Mittelenglisch) aufgeklärt zu haben. Hier : http://www.langcafe.net/viewtopic.php?t=461 gibt es verschiedene Beispiele von altnordischen Etyma, die während des Angevinen Zeitabschnittes in Schriftmittelenglisch übergenommen worden.
''How about the opposite situation? Is anyone aware of a language that had just one or two cases but then developed six or seven within historical times (not merely adopted them from another language but developed them)? If isolation is needed to create more highly inflected languages, then we'd expect to see few if any of them created during historical times.''
I don't not know exactly, but I once read about a creole language -- maybe it was Pidgin English -- which developed some morphological means for expressing something I don't remember. But I think it wasn't a case. A creole language is a developed Pidgin. I don't think that pidginisation means simplification. |