Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

Nik wrote :

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
> > I strongly agree with you. Also, these languages often refer to one
> > specific context by means of a locution made of several morphemes.
> > For instance, 'to give' would be referred to as 'hand...give' and
> > 'cow' as 'animal-cow'. I think that Europeans often underestimate
> > these 'classifiers' as 'redundant', whereas I do believe they are an
> > inherent part of the concept evoked. It's not a question of compounding
> > but of limiting and identifying the concept meant. Maybe 'grammar'
> > originate from some of these parts of words having gained mandatory
> > syntactic role ?
>
> Well, I don't think that these polysynthetic types *are* older than
> "modern" types.  Your example of "animal-cow" is essentially a
> gender-marker (animal gender).
Gender means that one of the two parts is sub-ordinated in meaning, which would not
the case where 'animal' is the 'cow' only when associated with 'cow' and 'cow'
is that animal only when associated with 'animal'. Gender classifiers are a
much more 'scientific' way of ordering the world into species :-)

  When such classifiers become mandatory,
> and spread to other words in the sentences (e.g., adjectives, verbs,
> pronouns), then they become genders.
>
Gender is a sexual classifier.

> Actually, I think that polysynthetic is the newest type.  My personal
> theory is that the first language was a few words, no grammar.  Much
> like pidgins, relying on context.  For instance, in Hawaiian pidgin
> (early pidgin), "me cape buy, me check make" could mean "He bought my
> coffee, he made me a check", or "I bought coffee, I made out a check"
> (that's an actual example).  Nouns and verbs, perhaps, were the first
> words.
I think first words were unaspective, so you could not tell a verb from a noun.

 Grammar would have appeared, but perfectly regular (no irregular
> verbs, for instance),
'grammar' (syntax) would be induced by integration (theme/rhem > subclause) to provide
with aspective.

 with a few simple rules.  Fixed word order, some
> way of distinguishing objects and subjects (either word order, redundant
> pronouns, or adpositions).  As the human mind grew in complexity,
> subordination, etc. appeared.  Various particles fused with words
> (adpositions with nouns, pronouns with verbs, for example), forming
> aglutinating and polysynthetic languages, as more fusion occured,
> fusional languages appeared, and finally those inflections were lost,
> returning to isolating, and so the cycle continued.
>
cycle : yes, but within aspectivation : I think when aspective meaning is included
within words you can't loose that anymore.

> Or, perhaps, language appeared full-blown, like ISN (idioma de signos
> nicaraguense), where deaf people, who had never learned sign language,
> pooled together a group of crude signs into a pidgin, dubbed LSN (lengua
> de signos nicaraguense).  Children observed this and created a
> full-blown language, ISN.  If Tommie's theory that the human mind
> prefers polysynthetic was true, one would expect a polysynthetic
> language to have emerged, yet it is, IINM, isolating.
>
Different human beings can gather in groups and invent from scratch a different language
for each group. Language is a faculty, not Tongue.

Mathias

> --
> "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
> was hanged." - Irish proverb
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>
>


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