Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

Charles wrote:
> There was a popular view some years ago, Bodmer and Flesch
> and Hogben and Ogden are some I have read, that primitive
> language was extremely complex and grammaticalized
> (lots of bound morphemes, affixes, irregularities);
> and that modern advanced languages such as English
> and Chinese were simple, isolating, and so on.
Yes, I remember some one saying that Chinese was "more evolved" than
English and other European languages.  Personally, it seems to me that
the sheer length of time that languages have been around should argue
against any idea of a linear (rather than circular) evolution - if there
*was* a linear evolution, than all the world's languages should be at
the end-type.

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