Origin of language

Factual Questions
1

Languages have gotten simpler over time. Older languages like Latin and ancient Greek have many more verb forms, cases etc. than most modern languages. So, I have three questions:

  1. Why do languages get simpler over time?

  2. At some point in the past, there was no language. Language can’t have suddenly appeared fully formed, so for a while language must have been getting more complex over time. Why would it get more complex then, but not now?

  3. This is only slightly related to the other two: What is the most complicated language still spoken today?

2

  1. They don’t, some get simpler, some get more complicated. Also verb forms is only one area and languages simplfy can complicate in different areas.

  2. See above.

  3. Very Subjective, how do you measure complexity? Size of vocabularly, cases, irregularity?

3

What language(s) have gotten more complex over time?

I’m interested in grammatical complexity, so number of verb forms, irregularity, number of genders, number of cases would all be ways of measuring complexity (I know those are mainly indo-european characteristics, but I’m not familiar with much else). For example, I would rate French as being more complex than Swedish, since it (French) has many more verb forms, and (I believe) many more irregular verbs. I would say Latin is more complex than French, since it has more verb forms, one more gender, cases, etc. I would consider Ancient Greek more complicated that Latin because it has many more verb forms etc.

I don’t know how Japanese would compare to indo-european languages, since it shares few characteristics. Japanese has complicated rules for formality, adjectives with tenses and kanji. However, it lacks cases (though particles function is a similar way), gender, verb conjugation for person, and its verbs are more regular than most indo-european languages. Is it even possible to compare two languages that are completely unrelated?

4

Some people actually have the opposite view to you (quoted from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language):

The passage proceeds (this also I think will answer your orginal question):

Also from the book:

5

I´m afraid it´s impossible to measure the “complexity” of a language in absolute terms.
While Finnish, e.g., completely lacks gender, articles, and has only three tenses (of which the future is rarely used), it does have 15 cases. But wait! These “cases” substitute a number of prepositions, possessive pronouns etc, so actually it´s simpler than, say, German, because that has prepositions and cases… So it´s impossible to say which of these two is more complicated.

It really depends on your mother tongue. For any given language, its native speakers will find it simple, and view some languages as relatively simple and others as more complex, depending on the similarities.

A Spanish speaker will probably find it more easy to learn French than Swedish, because it´s closely related. I think the suffixes in Finnish are an extremely easy and precise way of expressing location, movement and other circumstances, but I understand that it´s terribly confusing for English speakers.

I don´t think you can say one grammatical feature is more important or complicated than the other, and grammar also isn´t the only thing that makes a language complex. (And I must add I´d rather learn a language with complicated grammar than one with relatively simple grammar but a lot of irregularities and exceptions…)

6

I read in an encyclopedia that languages become simpler over time, but it was written in the 60s. Has the view changed since then?

Also, are there languages that have become significantly more complex than their ancestors? Many languages have lost genders, case systems, verb moods, tenses and voices, but are there any that have gained something as significant? (If so, which ones?)

7

English words tend to accrue usages like campers walking through a burr forest. Pedants continually complain that people are using words “wrongly” but this is a process that has been going on for hundreds of years. English word usages are also usually widely separated from their original derivations, making it difficult for non-English speakers to parse words from their roots or parts.

English also has enormous variations in pronunciation, even beyond dialects. And the notoriously “illogical” English spelling does not help make sense of these pronunications.

8

I ask you in what way is a language with two dozen or so prepositions and no declensions simpler than one with couple dozen declensions and no prepositions? In fact, languages don’t get simpler or more complex. They change from inflected languages to langues with lots of prepositions and verbal auxiliaries and back again.

I can’t vouch for this, but I have heard that Hungarian appears to be evolving from a language with loads of postpositions (just like prepositions except they come after, of which the only example I can think of in English is “ago”) into a language with a complex case system. English is being simple only to native speakers.

9

One theory is that change in language can be cyclical. IOW, a language may have numerous case markings at one point, change to few/none case marking, and then over time it’ll gain some. That’s just one aspect of cyclical change.

So, I wouldn’t use “evolve” for language (other than a pidgin evolving into a creole), but rather “change.”

10
  1. and 2) have already been addressed.

The most complex languages for English speakers, according to some cites referring to the US Army, are (in no order) Japanese, Arabic, Chinese (and one other I can’t remember, maybe Korean).

11

Scottish Gaelic has a few features that make it more complicated than its parent language, Irish. It has a second-person formal/informal distinction which Irish seems never to have had, and it has more variations of the definite article. Which are probably not incredibly significant, but still a pain in the learner’s arse.

On top of that, Scottish Gaelic has also grown to seem more complicated because Irish has become somewhat less, the latter having (for example) largely abandoned the dative case and undergone a major spelling reform.

12

One thing to keep in mind is that as soon as languages become written down and used throughout the society, then the breaks are put on changes. Change doesn’t stop, but it obviously slows down a lot. Especially with an alphabetic or sylabaric writing system. Not sure how a pure Kanji type writing system would effect language change.

But if you’re interested in the most conservative I-E language, it’s probably Lithuanian. It seems to be the closest extant language to the “Mother Tongue”. And it sure does seem that most I-E languages have gotten simpler over time, in terms of case endings at least. But certainly the overall complexity of a language is subjective, as others have pointed out.

13

Re: your third question. Finnish is one of the newest languages and is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker. I agree that difficulty is subjective, however.

14

Newest languages? What, was it invented out of nothing??

Finnish is probably hard to learn because their aren’t many languages that are closely related to it. And, being non-I-E, it’s especially hard for most Europeans. I’m sure the Estonians have no trouble learning it…

15

In respect of vocabulary, Finnish seems far more archaic than any other known modern living language. It is closest to the reconstructed Proto-Uralic than any other Uralic language. Also, the reconstructions of Nostratic by Vladimir Illich-Svitych, with a time depth of ca. 10,000 years before present (YBP), seem to resemble Proto-Uralic the most closely. This is not to say that Finnish is the “oldest” language (languages are always changing, and you cannot assign an “age” to a living, language, as you cannot step in the same river twice).

But it looks to me like the most archaic stratum of vocabulary surviving in Finnish resembles the proto-proto-language Nostratic more closely than any other living languages. Of course, the Finnish case system cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Uralic; it’s a later development.

Another living language with a deep retention of archaism is literary Tamil. Tamil is very close to Proto-Dravidian, a time depth of maybe 6,000 YBP, and so more of it has remained unchanged over a longer period of time than any other living language I know of.

Literary Arabic exhibits a strong archaism making it much more similar to Proto-Semitic than any other Semitic language. However, Arabic has nevertheless changed considerably from Proto-Semitic, but it’s got to be a long, long time depth there. (How old is Proto-Semitic? Certainly way older than the Akkadians who flourished ca. 4,500 YBP.)

So for the most archaic living languages I nominate Finnish, Tamil, and Arabic. I would place Lithuanian as the fourth most archaic on this list, given my current (limited) knowledge. However, there might be some little-known tribal language with even greater archaism that we don’t know about, if its protolanguage hasn’t been reconstructed for comparison. We wouldn’t have any way to gauge its time depth.

16

IIRC, Finnish’s conservative nature has made it easier than usual to trace the specifc timeframe that loan words enter that language. Swedish, understandably, has contributed some vocabulary, and since the words have changed little if any, it is pretty easy to date when the words entered that language based on the form of the particular word.

17

As has been mentioned, loss of complexity in one area tends to cause increased complexity in other areas when a language changes. When you speak of English losing complex features, you must also take care to note where other aspects of syntax have popped up or become more complex. Unfortunately, as a native speaker you are particularly ill-suited to notice the tough stuff because it’s second nature to you. You need to sit down and really consider English as if it were a foreign language to you.

Look up some prepositions in a good dictionary. Here’s an online entry for on. Imagine if you looked up a word in a language you were trying to learn and saw that. As a native speaker, this complexity is transparent to you. Ask somebody trying to learn English how they feel about definite and indefinite articles, or how to properly order a series of adjectives that modify a single noun (i.e. Why is “big red ball” good but “red big ball” bad? It just is, and you gotta memorize it). Most likely the idea that “the” vs. “a/an” could be confusing never even occured to you, and not many people realize there are complex rules governing how we order multiple adjectives either.

To a native speaker of a highly case-marked language, morphologically simple languages like English are not perceived as being easier or less complex at all. Chiefly because they aren’t.

18

Jomo Mojo: I was under the impression that Nostratic doesn’t have all that much support as a realistic theory.

19

Tagalog is an interesting language because it seems like a simple language, but from my experience it’s fairly complex. As was said before, complexity is subjective.

Tagalog does not have tense, it has temporal aspect (Verbs either have begun, have finished, or are contemplated).

Verbs also have triggers. This means that whatever noun is the trigger, it influences the conjugation of the verb. Triggers are: directional, beneficial, locative, object, actor, instrumental, and goal. These are either suffixes, or prefixes, and there’s at least one infix. In order to indicate temporal aspect, phonetic changes are used to produce it, which changes the initial consonant of a trigger affix, changes the initial consonant and reduplicates the first syllable of the root, infixes the trigger affix between the initial consonant and vowel of the root word, etc. (it’s fairly hard to explain).

There are no articles at all. There are trigger markers. and these attach to whatever noun is the trigger (as stated above). Non trigger nouns get another marker which marks it as not the trigger.

Prounouns are fairly simple, however there is an exclusive and an inclusive “we” (Including you and the listener and others (inclusive), or including you, and everyone else but the listener (exclusive)). There’s also a pronoun which exclusively includes you and the listener (kita).

Adjectives are most of the time neatly marked by a prefix indicating they are adjectives “maganda” - beautiful.

Nouns are probably the trickiest part because there are many many affixes which create nouns from roots. These affixes are suffixes, prefixes, infixes, or circumfixes.

Stress is extremely important because it differentiates words with similar semantics but spelled (in latin orthography) the same:

The word kaibigan means depending on stress:

ka-i-BI-gan - friend
ka-i-bi-GAN - desire
KA-i-bi-GAN - mutual consent
ka-I-bi-gan - sweet heart

however written Tagalog NEVER uses ANY accents (this drove me up the wall learning it), unless it’s a foreign word already spelled with the accents on it.

Simple pronunciation is easy, but words can have many syllables, and some have several vowels in one line (separated by glottal stops):

maaari - ma-a-a-ri (that’s four syllables, not two)

There’s probably more but i forget.

Anyway, Tagalog is also notable because it’s one of the more conservative Austronesian languages (along with the Taiwan languages). The whole trigger system of the verbs is considered archaic. As you move south and east the languages simplify their verbs, but compensate by being difficult in other ways.

20

Most languages in the modern age we live in are indeed becoming less complex (read: simplied) and there is one common factor in the modern day psyche of most people which has caused this to occur; if I can rant for a bit, I may just be able to get close to explaining it.

One typical example of this phenomena in English is the contraction. I don’t think the contraction was used in the last century in any kind of formal speech and most likely began as a lower-class uneducated phenomena. (see: ain’t) Naturally due to laziness in most folks’ mental centre, the contraction caught on.

Another example would be the Andalusian “dialect” of Spanish spoken in the southern part of Spain. Many words have become "contracted"and sounds omitted, especially the final consonant of almost all words.

These are the only two languages I am fluent in. In other languages which I can get by in, the same trend appears to be true.

There is a marked similarity to the trends in eating as well. Economy of speech and economy of time spent on preparing food. It boils down to the same thing: looking for more bang for less bucks.

Although conscousness has more or less remained the same for the past few thousand years, that is, “ancient” man had the same primitive thoughts and emotional reactions as folks do today, evidently before this time when languages first made their appearance and were developed evolutionarily, so to speak, people "had the time"and were willing to make the efort to express themselves with more complex declensions.

The trend over the last few thousand years is to invent vacuum cleaners and washing machines of the language, rather than continue doing the “dirty work” by hand,

pet peeved,

b.