Degrees of volition in active languages

* Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> [000813 23:41]:
> "H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> > What I meant to say was, I know that sometimes languages do gain
> > complexity, but I haven't quite figured out why it would.
>
> Quite simply, words become affixes.  For example, in the development of
> Latin to the Romance Langs, the original future tense had been lost (due
> to sound changes that caused it to be homophonous with the imperfect in
> certain conjugations, IIRC).  The Romans used several ways to get around
> it, once was infinitive + habere, originally with a meaning of something
> like "have to ___", thus, instead of the classic _cantabo:_ (I will
> sing), you had _cantare habeo_, by the time you get to the Romance
> langs, this has been contracted to (for Spanish) _cantaré_ < _cantar_ +
> _he_ (the descendant of habeo). [..]
I see you have read (due to the cantabo > cantare habeo example)
"Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology"
by Bernard Comrie. Excellent book, and of course I've forgotten to write
a review of it...


t.