Re: Future of English (was Re: Degrees of volition in activelanguages (was Re: Chevraqis: asketch)

"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> Cool idea! So I guess you're saying that languages are in some way cycling
> between being more inflected and more analytic.
Generally, it appears that languages have a tendency to sort of "cycle"
between two or more states (given the vast time frames involved, I
suppose any non-cyclic trends would long ago have been completed).  To
use another conlang example, Proto-Kassi-Plia had four cases
(nominative, accusative, genitive, dative).  Its descendant Common Kassi
lost all those cases (except in pronouns), and Watakassí evolved cases
from postpositions.  W's descendants gradually lost those cases.  PKP
had no personal inflections on verbs, in fact, very little verbal
inflection at all.  The old nominative pronouns became fused as personal
suffixes (which eventually became absolutive agreement), in addition to
auxiliaries and clitics, to create the complex verbal inflection of
Common Kassí.  After the old nominative pronouns were lost, and cases
were lost in general, a large analogical shifting occurred in the
pronouns, the old accusative forms became basic pronouns, and the old
singular case endings became invariant case endings, and new pronominal
forms were created.  But, as Common Kassí became Watakassí, these
pronouns were cliticized again, and the dative forms lost.  With the
pronouns becoming clitics, new free pronouns were devised by combining
_tárë_ (soul) with the genitive pronouns (thus, "my soul" = "I",
"our(dual) souls(dual)" = "we(dual)", etc.).  Also, the old applicative
clitics were lost, with just three exceptions, two of which became
voices, and the other became the causative prefix, so the applicative
category was lost, while new auxiliaries developed and became further
suffixes, the modal suffixes, such as -ni (want to).  Meanwhile, the
clitic pronouns were becoming reanalyzed as inflections, creating in its
descendants, complex patterns of inflections, which were eventually
simplified, inflections lost, etc.

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