Re: evolving languages

En réponse à Florian Rivoal <florian@...>:

>
> i have a vague idea of how sound change can occur, and borrowings is not
> so difficult for me to comprehend. but appart from that, i hardly know
> how grammar and sintax is likely to change.
>
The trick is: we don't know :(( . But there seem to be tendencies: from
concrete to abstract (e.g. Latin "de": out of became French "de": of), from
aspect to tense (the Latin perfect became the French simple past, and in French
this evolution happened even a second time, with the compound past, originally
indicating perfect, came to be used to mark punctual past), from mood to tense
(see English "will", which originally meant "want" and still has remnants of
that meaning, but most often simply marks plural). But very often, rather than
an evolution of features, we see a renewal of features (for instance, in Latin
the future of "amare" was "amabo". In Vulgar Latin the synthetic future was
dropped in favour of an periphrastic construction "amare habeo". In Modern
French the periphrastic construction merged into a new synthetic
form "j'aimerai". From Latin to Modern French, the future tense was never
abandoned and kept more or less the same meaning, but its form changed
completely.

In short, syntax evolved pretty much as it wants. When it does, it's usually by
a secondary meaning which acquires priority (like the IE subjunctive which
could be used secondarily to mark future, and became a true future tense in
Latin). But when and how, that's to anyone's guess ;)) .

> about phonetics, i am not asking for lots of sound change rules sample.
> tendencies would be more usefull to me (simplification or
> complexification, apperance/ disapearance of tones , ...)
>
I think it was John Cowan who gave already good tendencies. A point to remember
is that sound changes often works like erosion: clusters simplify, intervocalic
consonants weaken, vowel hiatus are resolved into diphtongues, finally full
words lose a word boundary, often recreating clusters and the like (the
evolution of French is one of the best example of those phenomena) while
through borrowings the language reintroduces intervocalic stops and otherwise
weakened sounds which don't weaken anymore because the sound changes that
provoked that are no longer active. Then again, remember that a tendency may
actually be absent for millenia. French has weakened intervocalic [p] down to
[v]. Spanish stopped at [b]. But in Italian intervocalic [p] just carried on
unharmed!

In short, there are plenty of tendencies. But languages tend to be more or less
willing to follow them, and the less willing ones seem to resist quite
well ;)))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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