Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

"Mark P. Line" <mark@...> skribis:

>2. Clitics can't go just anywhere. They're just as much a part of the
>morphosyntax and phonology of the language as any other. (A counterexample
>would have to be a clitic that can attach to any word of any sentence,
>while producing some coherently modified meaning of any constituent it
>might thereby make itself part of. That's not very likely, is it.)
Esperanto has at least one prefix (mal-) and several modifier
particles (ne, jam, ankaux, ecx...) that can precede just about any
word.  A language that has non-syllabic clitics with the same meaning
or role as those is readily imaginable, though I don't know of an example
offhand.

Maybe a future evolved Esperanto where "ne" has
undergone reduction to /n/ before any word that doesn't
start with /n/.

Classical E-o:
Ne li faris tion.   It wasn't him who did that.
Li ne faris tion.   He didn't do that.
Li amas ne sxin.  He loves not-her.
  (i.e. someone other than her, in context)

Future E-o with reduction of some unstressed vowels, etc:
/nli fars tjon/
/li nfars tjon/
/lj am nSin/


- Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

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