Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> The pro-complements in a verbal string in modern French are all bound
> morphemes and come in a very fixed order; the speaker has the option of
> inserting the bound morphemes in the required places.   That neither makes
> modern French a "Stone Age" language nor 'computer-like'.
>
> Indeed, many linguists now prefer to treat the constructions found in
> "polysynthetic languages" as a complex of agglutinative & fusional
> structures. [Snip]
> Of course, it must be remembered that terms such as 'isolating', 'fusional' and
> 'agglutinative' show typological _tendencies_ rather than describe individual
> languages.  Most natlangs seems to show varying aspects of these tendencies.
Please allow me to AGREE with you.  You seem to want to argue with me, but you
keep saying things that support the main elements of my theory.

My theory is about the nature of Stone Age languages, and is based on the
observation that the only PURELY polysynthetic languages that we know of (except
in the special case of New Guinea) are tribal languages of seasonally migratory
hunting-and-gathering people, and that most such people who survived into modern
times *still* spoke purely polysynthetic languages.

Thanks for pointing out that some modern languages -- some languages that aren't
purely polysynthetic -- show some polysynthetic tendancies.  And thanks for also
pointing out that the agglutinative and fusional structures of modern languages
could be viewed as incomplete forms of purely polysynthetic structures.  Both of
those observations indicate that the human mind may be predisposed to creating
purely polysynthetic structures -- which makes it all the more likely that, before
simple-and-sloppy trade languages began arising about 6,000 years ago, we all
spoke purely polysynthetic languages.

-- Tommie