Re: Umlaut, Vowel Harmony etc

Quoting Geoff Horswood <geoffhorswood@...>:

> Take a look at almost any "proto-" lang.  Almost invariably they are highly
> structured and regular.  IMO, it's interaction with other langs that bends
> pre-existing structure in a lang.  Eventually, the structure collapses, or
> becomes filled with so many exceptions to the rules that the rules
> themselves become basically worthless (again, see English :) )
>
> What do you people think?
I think that the regularity of reconstructed protolangs is largely an artefact
of reconstruction.

There might be something to the idea that complicated case systems and the like
tends to be found in isolated languages. The analyticity of a language like
English is rather creole-like, which might make sense for a language that's
continuously in close contact with other languages.

I don't have the typological data to back anything of this up.

                                                          Andreas