Re: Language Change
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, January 5, 2000, 4:15 |
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Patrick Dunn wrote:
> 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.
Also, don't forget that simplification in one area (like morphology)
tends to make language more complex in others (like syntax). For
instance, the loss of free word order in English created the unusually
complex do-question forms. From the syntactically simpler "Whom saw
ye?" we got the more syntactically complex, but morphologically simpler,
"Who did you see?"
--
"Old linguists never die - they just come to voiceless stops." -
anonymous
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