Re: isolating is equivalent to inflected

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 00:27:38 -0500, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> I'm sure this is old hat to people with actual
> linguistic training, but it was like a major epiphany
> to me this evening.
The process you describe is called grammaticalization. Sounds like a made
up word, and it very probably is, but it's something about which many
books have been written, some of them good. I haven't read nearly enough
on the subject, though it fascinates me.

The cycle seems to most usually be:

1) isolating
i) particles connect to words, thus
2) agglutinative
ii) sound changes erode affixes, and analogy levels them, thus
3) flexional
iii) sound changes and analogy effectively erode the inflections
completely, and new particles are adopted from auxilliaries, thus
4) isolating

I don't know whether the cycle runs backwards in natlangs. I can sort of
see vaguely how it might, but I don't have a full understanding of the
whys and wherefores.



Paul