On the order of the loss of personal verbal inflections

[Particles the Greek]

Can the order in which personal inflections on verbs disappear, or cease to be distinctive, be put down to:

1. Phonetic/phonemic similarity or distinctiveness
2. Frequency of use
3. A global universal tendency
4. Morphologicla or syntactic factors (e.g. use of subject pronouns)
5. Something else

?

[Hallow XIII]

Your question seems to assume such an order necessarily exists.

[Chagen]

As cop-outy as this answer sounds, I'm gonna guess it has to depend on the language.

Just look at the Romance languages. Just a few changes like /ae/ > /e/ literally obliterated the case system of Latin, yet the verbal system though greatly atrophied is still intact. In the meanwhile, it can't just be "use of subject pronouns" because German has obligatory verbal person-marking AND pronouns. English just chucked out the system (when it could have) but German didn't.

[Dewrad]

Can the order in which personal inflections on verbs disappear, or cease to be distinctive, be put down to:

1. Phonetic/phonemic similarity or distinctiveness
2. Frequency of use
3. A global universal tendency
4. Morphologicla or syntactic factors (e.g. use of subject pronouns)
5. Something else

?

Personal inflections on verbs don't disappear in a set order. As far as those languages whose histories I am familiar with are concerned (which is quite a lot, in honesty), the motivating factor behind personal inflections becoming indistinct/being lost is always soundchange.

[Drydic]

Example: in Spanish, the 3rd person singular is the least marked (yes I am aware that it is not fully unmarked in all tenses or conjugations), yet in English the 3rd person singular is the only one (outside of be) with any distinctive marking (in the present, at least).

[Particles the Greek]

In other words "I can merge the personal inflections of my verbs in any reasonably plausible way I want to". That's reassuring.

[Drydic]

Exactly

[Jess]

in English the 3rd person singular is the only one (outside of be) with any distinctive marking (in the present, at least).

According to this http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/nav/br ... ?number=34 that is extremely rare, with English as the only given example.

http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/nav ... try_id=280 Apparently third and first person zero-expression are the most common. As for why, your hypothesis is as good as mine.

[Drydic]

in English the 3rd person singular is the only one (outside of be) with any distinctive marking (in the present, at least).

According to this http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/nav/br ... ?number=34 that is extremely rare, with English as the only given example.

http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/nav ... try_id=280 Apparently third and first person zero-expression are the most common. As for why, your hypothesis is as good as mine.

They're two of the most common, if not the two most common, verb forms that occur. (granted if we don't split out by number there's usually only 3 contestants, but still)