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gaining grammatical complexities
Guest:
"However,
if a germanic element becomes fixed in one highly influential language or dialect, as was Old French, then its spread into other closely related dialects/languages like Romanian, Old Spanish, Old Italian, etc. is basically guaranteed. It only takes one leader to affect an army.
Such is the case in my opinion "
Guest, you are right! One has to take into account that the whole Western Imperium Romanum was massively invaded and after this dominated for centuries by Germanic peoples, who all were quite closely related with each other and who introduced many changes in Latin grammar and vocabulary. These changes are parallel in some features, and not so parallel in others - that´s normal. One indice for the Germanic impact on Romance is, that the different Romance dialect- and language-boundaries correspond to medieval realms of Germanic peoples. For example: Franco-Provencal corresponds to the Burgundian realm, Langue d´Oil to the Franks, Langue dÓc to the Wisigoths in South France etc.
Which Romance language was less influenced by the Germanic invasions? Spanish maybe?
<<Which Romance language was less influenced by the Germanic invasions? Spanish maybe?>>
I don't think there's really a way to adequately quantify such, but to give it a stab I'd say:
Portuguese
Sicilian
Rumanian
would be good candidates
Ah, j'oubliais la carte pour l'an 500 : http://www.euratlas.net/AHP/histoire_europe/carte_europe_0500.jpg . C'est probablement une carte de ce type qui a pu te conduire à penser que les divisions oïl/oc/arpitan étaient basées sur un découpage politique.
Mais il n'en est rien : le royaume des Burgondes englobe la zone septentrionale du provençal et le royaume des Wisigoths comprend la zone sud-occidentale d'Oïl. De plus une frange orientale d'Oïl est sous administration alémanique.
Guest:
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...One has to take into account that the whole Western Imperium Romanum was massively invaded and after this dominated for centuries by Germanic peoples, who all were quite closely related with each other and who introduced many changes in Latin grammar and vocabulary. These changes are parallel in some features, and not so parallel in others - that´s normal. One indice for the Germanic impact on Romance is, that the different Romance dialect- and language-boundaries correspond to medieval realms of Germanic peoples. For example: Franco-Provencal corresponds to the Burgundian realm, Langue d´Oil to the Franks, Langue dÓc to the Wisigoths in South France etc.
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The following map provided by greg of Germanic realms in the year 500
http://www.euratlas.net/AHP/histoire_europe/carte_europe_0500.jpg
shows perfectly the point: the area where different Romance dialects and languages (French, Italian, Portugese, Spanish) correspond to medieval realms of different Germanic peoples.
'Guest' : « [...] he area where different Romance dialects and languages (French, Italian, Portugese, Spanish) correspond to medieval realms of different Germanic peoples. »
Non, au contraire : cette carte montre l'inverse.
1] Les vallées occitanophones situées dans l'Italie actuelle (province du Piedmont) sont dans le royaume d'Italie et des Goths (zone beige) : elles sont détachées du reste de l'occitanophonie (elle-même éclatée en trois zones politiques distinctes).
2] Toujours dans le royaume d'Italie et des Goths, la ligne La Spezia-Rimini (ou Massa-Senigallia) qui délimite la Romanie occidentale (lombard, piedmontais, ligure, émilien-romagnol, vénète etc) de la Romanie orientale (toscan, napolitain, calabrais, sicilien etc) n'est pas sanctionnée par une frontière politique, ce qui invalide complétement la "théorie" fumeuse qui tend à superposer la linguistique sur le politique.
Rappel important : la ligne de démarcation linguistique La Spezia-Rimini est au moins aussi importante que celle qui départage les langues d'Oïl des langues d'Oc (voir : http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linea_Massa-Senigallia ).
3] Le royaume des Burgondes (en brun) amalgame la zone arpitane ( http://www.forez-info.com/info2/media/images14/aferepecardc.jpg ) avec les confins sud-orientaux du domaine d'Oïl, avec tout l'espace septentrional du provençal et même une frange germanique située à l'est de ce royaume !
4] Le royaume des Wisigoths (orangé) est celui qui correspond le moins aux réalités linguistiques : il comprend le provençal méridional mais exclut le provençal septentrional ; il comprend la partie sud-occidentale du domaine d'Oïl ; il comprend la zone castillane qui n'est pas distinguée de l'espace catalan pourtant apparenté aux langues d'Oc.
5] Quant au royaum des Francs (rose), non seulement toute la partie méridionale du domaine d'Oïl lui échappe, mais aussi tout un pan oriental (partagé entre les royaume des Burgondes et le duché d'Alémanie). D'autre part, ce royaume franc incorpore des espaces germanophones au nord-est.
Non, vraiment, on pas dû regarder la même carte !...
>>>I always here how languages lose grammatical features, like cases, dual number etc, but I never hear about them gaining them. Is there a reason for this or am I mistaken? Why do languages seem to become less complex grammatically over time?<<<
It's just a popular belief. Those lost grammatical features, as I see it, would probably be either 1) rather different from the very analytic language of English (or another language you know very well), with all their exceptions in terms of collocations, leading to the belief or 2) something that sounds archaic (so that you would want to ask those countries, like many Slavic ones, to purge their grammatical complexity for the good of learners) and has thus been exaggerated in terms of (practical) difficulty (in learning).
I don't know why (Chinese) people, even including some Chinese teachers of German, say German must be hard to learn. Discouraging others? Or encouraging others (to attend their lessons)? This is both truth and nonsense. The fact that you have to learn everything of a language, often in the pursuit of permanent fluency (i.e. native-like), would mean you have to as fluent as native speakers who have lived all their life with this language. Also, in real terms, in at least 2 languages I know, Chinese, my native, and English, my advanced, are BOTH complex, and just complex in some common and some non-common areas.
That people tend to treat morphological complexities as grammatically difficult, while it is true in some sense, might have been exaggerated. Is it true that a morphologically complex language must be (objectively) more difficult than a syntactically complex (i.e. heavily dependent on word order) one? That would only be true, I think, if Chinese kids are always speaking riddles to let every other kid and grown-up to reveal their true meanings. With few "grammatical features", you would still look like an idiot (or, at least, a poor fellow waiting someone like me to help you) if you can't get the word order right (and, at a advanced level, to be able to discern contexts).
By the same token, many Chinese (prospective) students are often intimidated by "grammatical features", particularly the "cool" languages as German and Russian (both of which have relatively little to do with my country, compared to Japanese and Korean), which also happen to be morphologically more complex, and say conjugations and declensions must be _that_ hard, pretty like what an average Anglophone Joe would say, who isn't at all interested in learning _any_ language. I'm quite sure that, very often, the COUNTLESS nuances you have to understand to reach the ultimate fluency would be theoretically equally complex in any language for the foreign learner who, though, would certainly be affected by their own linguistic background.
The foreign learner: Your language is pretty hard! How have you really learnt all those complex rules?
The native speaker: Rules? I didn't learn them. Every kid here doesn't learn rules, and they still speaks the language.
Xie Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:35 pm GMT
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>>>I always here how languages lose grammatical features, like cases, dual number etc, but I never hear about them gaining them. Is there a reason for this or am I mistaken? Why do languages seem to become less complex grammatically over time?<<<
It's just a popular belief.
"""""
It´s not just a belief but a fact that ancient Latin, Germanic and Greek are quite complex and hard to learn. Especially Latin is known to be some kind of linguistic mathematics, where complex constructions are linked together instead of saying simply (analytically) what´s the matter.
Hi complexity helps saving paper (or stone). A Latin Text is much shorter than its translation into a modern language.
Wikipedia sais to Hittite (oldes IE language)
"The Hittite nominal system consisted of the following cases: Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Allative, Dative-Locative, Instrumental and Ablative. However, the recorded history attests to fewer cases in the plural than in the singular, and later stages of the language indicate a loss of certain cases in the singular as well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language
So even here, simplification was at work. The first IE language must have been coming from nowhere and had the highest morphological complexity - very mysterious!
Question:
Do we see the same sort of trend that we see in the children of IE in other language families like Uralic, Altaic, Austronesian?
Do they simplify as well, and to a comparable degree?
<<Hi complexity helps saving paper (or stone). A Latin Text is much shorter than its translation into a modern language. >>
I once read that they used lots of abbreviations then, too.
According Wikipedia´s description, proto-Inod-Eurpean language was quite complex:
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Morphology
PIE was an inflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signaled through inflectional morphemes (usually endings).
Ablaut
One of the unique aspects of PIE was its ablaut sequence that contrasted the vowel phonemes o/e/Ø [no vowel] within the same root. Ablaut is a form of vowel variation which changed between these three forms perhaps depending on the adjacent sounds and placement of stress in the word. These changes are echoed in modern Indo-European languages where they have come to reflect grammatical categories.
Noun
Proto-Indo-European nouns were declined for eight cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, ablative, locative, vocative). There were three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
There are two major types of declension, thematic and athematic. Thematic nominal stems are formed with a suffix -o- (in vocative -e) and the stem does not undergo ablaut. The athematic stems are more archaic, and they are classified further by their ablaut behaviour (acro-dynamic, protero-dynamic, hystero-dynamic and holo-dynamic, after the positioning of the early PIE accent (dynamis) in the paradigm).
Pronoun
PIE had personal pronouns in the first and second person, but not the third person, where demonstratives were used instead. The personal pronouns had their own unique forms and endings, and some had two distinct stems; this is most obvious in the first person singular, where the two stems are still preserved in English I and me. According to Beekes (1995), there were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive and dative cases, a stressed and an enclitic form.
Personal pronouns (Beekes 1995)
First person Second person
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative h₁eǵ(oH/Hom) wei tuH yuH
Accusative h₁mé, h₁me nsmé, nōs twé usmé, wōs
Genitive h₁méne, h₁moi ns(er)o-, nos tewe, toi yus(er)o-, wos
Dative h₁méǵʰio, h₁moi nsmei, ns tébʰio, toi usmei
Instrumental h₁moí ? toí ?
Ablative h₁med nsmed tued usmed
Locative h₁moí nsmi toí usmi
Verb
The Indo-European verb system is complex and, as the noun, exhibits a system of ablaut.
Verbs have at least four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative, as well as possibly the injunctive, reconstructible from Vedic Sanskrit), two voices (active and mediopassive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs are conjugated in at least three "tenses" (present, aorist, and perfect), which actually have primarily aspectual value. Indicative forms of the imperfect and (less likely) the pluperfect may have existed. Verbs were also marked by a highly developed system of participles, one for each combination of tense and mood, and an assorted array of verbal nouns and adjectival formations.
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Indeed, Proto Indo European seems to have been highly complex if compared to modern descendants...
Lol, proto-indo eauropean is fake invention of idle minds.
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