Re: Language Change

Proto-Indo-European's cases are thought by many to have evolved from
postpositions.  If English re-evolved cases, they would no doubt come
from our prepositions, and would appear as prefixes.

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                       edheil@postmark.net
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Patrick Dunn wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > Mia Soderquist wrote:
> > >
> > > Could someone explain some of the ways that grammar of a language
> > > might change over time? I can see that it might gain or lose
> > > tenses, affixes of various sorts, etc, but is word order likely
> > > to change? All comments appreciated!
>
> > >From what I gather, categories, like case, are usually lost gradually, a
> > language might have, say, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative,
> > instrumental, and then over time, one case after another can be lost,
> > but they're usually gained full-fledged, that is, a language might go
> > from having no cases to having four or five quite rapidly.  It may gain
> > others later on, but it's unlikely to go from none to two cases, to
> > three, and so on.  Another example, a language with no personal
> > inflection would be unlikely to pick up 1st singular, but none others,
> > then later 2nd singular and so on, it would more likely pick up a full
> > set thru cliticizing pronouns.  But it might lose them gradually,
> > perhaps thru phonetic attrition, the same process that destroyed English
> > cases by turning them all to /@/.
>
> I was unaware that languages could gain cases; I was always under the
> impression that languages tended to simplify, but now I see that "simple"
> is subjective, isn't it?  Hmm.
>
> What sorts of things cause a language to gain cases?  Might English?
> Wouldn't that be fun!  I've always felt disappointed in English's lack of
> cases, esp. in poetry.
>
> In poetry cases tend to mine two important things:
>
> 1.  Word order is variable.  This means emphasis can be marked by position
> in several ways.  In English, we can end a line to mark emphasis, or use
> metrical feautres (caesurae, for example), but with a case system we can
> begin a line with a word for emphasis (in English, the first words of
> lines are often articles and other "empty" words), employ metrical
> features, and do so with absolute freedom.  It's hard, in English, for
> example, to place an adjective before a caesura.  Not impossible, but
> difficult.  We tend to link adjectives and their nouns as metrical units.
> But in a case language, the adjective and the noun it modifies can be
> separated by great distance, which means you can choose which to place
> before a caesura (or at the end of a line, etc.)
>
> 2.  It allows greater variety in rhyme, if the cases are regular.  (How
> many Latin nouns rhyme?  All of those ending in -us, and that's a lot.
> All of those ending in -a, and that's a lot)  This, paradoxically, can
> de-emphasize the importance of rhyme -- look at Italian verse forms, for
> instance, like the sestina.  It also allows a parallelism of ideas.  Let
> me give you an example, mutilated from a verse in the battle of maldon,
> with cases marked (this is btw from memory, so pardon errors):
>
> let(verb) he then brown.ACC from hand.DAT to forest.DAT beloved.ACC
> hawk.ACC to fly.
>
> This is, as I said, from memory and probably entirely wrong, but it
> illustrates the idea.  Take a look at Caedmon's hymn for another excessive
> example, in which names for God are heaped one on the other until you
> begin to dispair of ever seeing a verb again.  :)
>
> --Pat