Language change in the absence of demographic change?

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So Haleza Grise
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Post by So Haleza Grise »

sangi39 wrote:
zompist wrote:
sangi39 wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:PIE supposedly had no cases; but lots of extant IE languages have at least four (NADG) and Latin had seven.
Just to be picky, PIE is generally reconstructed with the nominative, accusative, genitive, locative, dative, ablative, instrumental and vocative cases, IIRC.
Mostly because Sanskrit has these cases. Lehmann suggests that PIE had just nom/acc/gen, the others being formed in the descendant languages via postpositions.
I have seen that but either way, the statement that PIE had no cases seems a tad off.
PIE's an abstraction; there isn't a particular time period we can point to and call it "classic" PIE. It's certainly likely that at some stage PIE (or "pre-PIE", if you like) had no cases and was an active-stative language.
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So Haleza Grise
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Post by So Haleza Grise »

murtabak wrote:Alright, since I was not making it clear on what I meant by major, I'd give it another try. Essentially I meant a new concept that hasn't been distinguished in the parent language.

1. How likely is it for an isolated language on an island, within a span of ~1000-1500 years, to develop either one of these things where there was none in its ancestral lang:

- New place of articulation for consonants
- Tone
- Vowel shift

- At least two genders
- At least two cases (e.g. nominative and oblique/accusative)
- Perfective/imperfective distinction
- Dual numbers
- Change in typology (e.g. from predominantly analytic to agglutinating or vice versa)
- Politeness distinction/markers

2. Now, how about the same isolated language losing either of these things?

3. Do you think that a mainland language (with all the interactions, conquests, migrations that it undergoes) is more likely to either acquire or lose either of these things within the same time span?

Hopefully I'm not being vague now.
I think (1) is particularly plausible in the transition from an analytic to synthetic language.

Once separate, languages seem to undergo similar paths of development, as loose tendencies in the parent language crystallise into rules independently. Development of articles in IE languages, for instance.

Static societies aren't. The speech community has all sorts of internal processes of natural demographic change. So even when isolated from external communities, there's plenty of chance for a language to modify. If there's a formal written standard that everyone has access to that may slow things somewhat.
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So Haleza Grise
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Post by So Haleza Grise »

Radius Solis wrote:Tones being mainly an areal feature is a myth. You find tonal languages on every continent except Europe, and not just a few. Most African languages, and around half of languages in the Americas, are also tonal. So that's four continents where it's extremely common.

There's two other parts of the world where phonemic tones are rare, Oceania and Australia. All three toneless regions have something else in common, too: they are dominated by a single language family each. Oceania is dominated by Oceanic langs; Australia by Pama-Nyungan langs; and Europe by IE langs.
I'm sceptical. Tone don't exist in the Caucasus, AFAICT. Similarly Northern Australia is genetically very diverse but still has for the most part the standard Australian areal phoneme inventory.
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Post by Nortaneous »

So Haleza Grise wrote:Tone don't exist in the Caucasus, AFAICT.
yes it does
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Post by murtabak »

So Haleza Grise wrote:Once separate, languages seem to undergo similar paths of development, as loose tendencies in the parent language crystallise into rules independently. Development of articles in IE languages, for instance.
Seems like it too in this layman's eyes. Each of the language families seem to come with certain "spareparts", so to speak, that facilitates certain kinds of construction while making other constructions difficult. Like Austronesian langs everywhere tending to have lots of demonstrative/deixis, lots of cirscumstantials (aka Austronesian alignment), but seldom any gender or case marking. Certainly these "spareparts" themselves can be eroded or lost, but not after a very long time (~5000 years or more?).
So Haleza Grise wrote:Static societies aren't.
OSV? Nay, COMP-S-COPULA :mrgreen:
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Post by Ngohe »

murtabak wrote:
- New place of articulation for consonants
- Tone
- Vowel shift
I think such changes in pronunciation could occur quite easily.
- At least two genders
I'm not aware of any documanted case where a language has gained cases. If we were only talking about noun classes, it would perhaps be a little easier. Grammatical gender must trigger some kind of agreement. I'm not really sure about how this might arise. I can just speculate: Perhaps it could start pronouns, which might be regularly attached to the nouns, so that people woudl say "the man him". Which might be grammaticalized as "the manim" or something like that. Perhaps agreement/grammatical gender could arise of people attached the pronoun both to the noun, and to adjectives. So that "the green man" would become "the green him man him", which in turn would become "the greenim manim". (Note: this is pure speculation!)
- At least two cases (e.g. nominative and oblique/accusative)
I the i"original language" has a particle thar marks either the nominative or the accusative/objective case, it can easily be grammaticalized, and thus give rise to cases. The same would be true for adpositions, which easily could give rise to various oblique cases.
murtabak wrote:
- New place of articulation for consonants
- Tone
- Vowel shift
I think such changes in pronunciation could occur quite easily.
- At least two genders
I'm not aware of any documanted case where a language has gained cases. If we were only talking about noun classes, it would perhaps be a little easier. Grammatical gender must trigger some kind of agreement. I'm not really sure about how this might arise. I can just speculate: Perhaps it could start pronouns, which might be regularly attached to the nouns, so that people woudl say "the man him". Which might be grammaticalized as "the manim" or something like that. Perhaps agreement/grammatical gender could arise of people attached the pronoun both to the noun, and to adjectives. So that "the green man" would become "the green him man him", which in turn would become "the greenim manim". (Note: this is pure speculation!)
- At least two cases (e.g. nominative and oblique/accusative)
If the "parent language" has a particle that marks either the objective/accusative or the nominative case, it could easily be grammaticalized.
-Perfective/imperfective distinction
It's a bit tricky. It depends on how this distinction is expressed in the original or parent language. Many languages have no grammatical marking of aspect. It has to be indicated by context. The first step in the development of aspect marking would be to deveop some regular, syntactic means of expressing aspect. For example, certain auxiliary verbs might be used. These verbs might then evolve into particles, whose only function is to mark aspect. The final step is for these particles to be grammaticalized.

- Change in typology (e.g. from predominantly analytic to agglutinating or vice versa)
Languages typically develop from analytic to agglutinating to inflecting/fusional, and then to analytic again. A language that is left for itself for 1000 years or so might change somewhat in this respect. It might become somewhat more isolating, or somewhat more syntetic. It might not be very likely that a language ge from one extrem to another, for example, from a polysynthetic to a radically isolating language, "by itself" in 1000 year. Perhaps in 4000 yera or so, but 1000 years seems to little time. Most languages of the world has both analytic and synthetic features, few are "extreme" in one or the other direction.

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