Development of flexions in European Langugages

[tobias]

Hi

Can anyone explain to me the following?

How come that most of the European languages have lost their flexions throughout their history? In their development, Scandinavian languages, Dutch and English and the Romanic languages have lost their genitive, dative forms and the object case has become the same as the nominative. Also the amount of genders has declined. Mostly masculine and feminin genders melted e.g. in Dutch and Scandinavian languages.

Also in many languages the verb forms were much more complicated. Verbs have turned from irregular to regular; declensions of nouns have become more regular or nonexistent.

If you compare e.g. the many declensions of Icelandic to the ones existing nowadays in Swedish - Swedish has lost most of its declensions. You may also compare Latin to Italian and see the same development.

The loss of flexions seems to have taken place between 1000 - 1500??? - How come this seems to have happened to most European languages - Is this by accident or is there a pattern?

rgds
T

[Maïwenn]

My explanation isn't very scientific, other people will give you real theories.

People are lazy, so they tend to simplify everything...

[nuba]

I don't know any scientific explanations either, but maybe there is some kind of pattern in the development of languages - if one consideres for instance that all the antique languages like latin or ancient greek or sanskrit were even much more differenciated with regard to their flexion systems than the modern european languages at the beginning of their development.
So, since antiquity, there has been a general simplification process in most languages.

The question is: How did the ancient languages come to have such a complicated flexion system?
Maybe before, there has been a process of "complication" from more simply structurated languages to complexe grammar systems like the one of the latin language.

This would mean that there are possibly regular periods of simplification and complication in language structures throughout history, but I doubt whether this kind of pattern isn't too simple.

[sv]

only german and roman language groups are affected as i understand.

[tom]

We could also imagine a social influence of one linguistic group on the other : after all, German groups (Franks, Wisigoths, and so on) were present in the periods and in the regions where Latin languages lost their antique features. So the most simple language (or at least, the one which had already become the most simple) was an easy-to-copy model for the other groups ? Then we come back to Maiwenn's explanation :

[Olivier]

The question is: How did the ancient languages come to have such a complicated flexion system?
Maybe before, there has been a process of "complication" from more simply structurated languages to complexe grammar systems like the one of the latin language.

a new complicated grammatical system may arise as a replacement of old one that had become inefficient
flexions may evolve from suffixes, suffixes from separate words
-- Olivier

[tobias]

Hi thanx for your answers

I still wonder - how come this has happened almost simultaneously in many countries of central Europe and how come that languages like Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian have kept their endings - not to speak of Icelandic?

If the flexions become ineffective - how come they still work for the icelandic people in the same way they did eight hundred years ago and why did the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes drop their endings?

Could it be that wars and commercial cooperation or even the church during the 1200-1500 centuries and it's education may have also influenced these languages? Is there a pattern to be seen?

[pc2]

Hi thanx for your answers
I still wonder - how come this has happened almost simultaneously in many countries of central Europe and how come that languages like Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian have kept their endings - not to speak of Icelandic?

salutations,

well, in the colloquial speech, endings normally tend to be dropped. for example, in colloquial German, instead of speaking Das Auto Meines Bruders (genitive), they speak (correct us if we are wrong) Das Auto von Mein Bruder, dropping the genitive and using only the preposition "von".

If the flexions become ineffective - how come they still work for the icelandic people in the same way they did eight hundred years ago and why did the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes drop their endings?

the development of languages is a very interesting thing. maybe the language of the Icelandics was kept because of the influence of the church, and maybe the language was considered official and was teached in schools, and a big part of the declension system was kept.

Could it be that wars and commercial cooperation or even the church during the 1200-1500 centuries and it's education may have also influenced these languages? Is there a pattern to be seen?

well, the wars tend to influence the languages in many ways, like, for example, the mixture of people that speak a different language, for example, when the Romans were getting weak, they falled with the penetration and attack of the barbarians. Latin continued to be spoken coloquially, but the Latin schools of that time were closed, and Latin was free for natural developing.
so, the most of the Romanic languages of today don't have declensions. an exception to be seen is Romanian. maybe it is most close to Latin because of the area it is spoken, but it surely had many phonetic changes, because of the colloquial speak.
you can also take, for example, the pidgins in development today. they are mixtures of languages spoken by 2 people. the pidgins tend to be much simplier, because it develops from a mixture of (for example) a language with a very big set of grammatical cases, and other language 100 times simplier, with no inflection at all.

another good example is the colloquial portuguese of Brazil. it is much simplier compared to the grammatical portuguese. Brazillians tend to speak coloquially with very few inflections, and very poor verb concordance, for example:

grammatical: "eles foram todos para o lugar" - they went all to the place.
street: "eles foi tudo pro lugar." - they went all to the place.

NOTES: foi - 3rd person singular.
tudo - singular form of "todos"
pro - contraction of the preposition "para" (to) + "o" (the)

but this colloquial Portuguese is considered to be very informal. it's not considered correct to speak like this in formal speech.

if you or anyone else's got any other doubt, feel free to ask.

best regards,

[sv]

not only finno-ugric languages but also slavic and baltic languages have their declinations on their places. 6-7 noun cases are usual for those languages.
but it doesn't mean that they haven't been changing.
e.g. russian lost 'to be' as an auxiliary verb, though it was in use some 500 years ago.

English now have 16 tenses, though not all of them are tenses in e.g. our understanding, but it was some sort of a compensation. grammar always holds the balance. if something is dropped in one part, something will be added to another. to maintain the reachness of the language. they dropped cases endings but replaced them with prepositions. so they are not lost completely. as i understand this is what germans now tend to do as well if pc2 is right.

i think that such a loss of declination and conjugation endings/suffixes can't go quickly. they can't be dropped at a time. first mechanisms must be formed, which could replace those endings with time without loss of understanding.

[Sisyphe]

The desappearance of casual endings and the tranformation from a flexionnal into a analytic language is always a very intersting question for diachronical linguistics. I am linguist myself, whereas I could beter speak about classical languages than about germanic ones. But thes facts are kindred.

Unfortunately, my I am not sure that I would be able to explain it in english (theses lines are showing you, how rough my english could be) : so, I will write it in french, and if you need some translation, I hope someone else on that forum will do it.

*

Il faut distinguer deux phénomènes différents :

- le syncrétisme formel
- le syncrétisme fonctionnel.
- systèmes de substitution

I. syncrétisme fonctionnel

On parle de syncrétisme formel lorsque deux terminaisons casuelles viennent à se confondre par les hasards de l'évolution phonétique. En indo-européen, par exemple, il existait pour la flexion thématique ("o-stem flexion") [latin "dominus", grec "logos", gotique "tag(a)"], une désinence de locatif en *-oisu et une désinence d'instrumental en -ôis. Or l'évolution phonétique fait que les deux, en latin, aboutissent nécesserement à *ois (puis eis et enfin îs en latin classique).

Le syncrétisme formel joue beaucoup dans les langues où l'accent remonte natruellement le plus possible dans le mot. Car plus l'accent est éloigné de la finale, plus la finale elle-même est affaiblie. Ce fut le cas du latin à l'époque tardive :

(latin classique) / (prononciation en latin tardif)
No. rosa / [rosa]
Vo. rosa / [rosa]
Ac. rosam / [rosa] - le [m] disparaît
Ge. rosae / [rosε]
Da. rosae / [rosε]
Ab. rosâ / [rosa] - les différence de longueur disparaissent.

Dès lors, l'opposition entre l'accusatif (rosam) et l'ablatif (rosa) n'est plus faite, ni même entre le nominatif et l'accusatif. Ce qui est très gênant.

Le syncrétisme formel s'est aussi produit dans les langues germaniques, où l'accent se place sur le début des mots. Prenons le mot "dags" du gotique (le jour) :

No. dags
Ac. dag
Ge. dagis
Da. daga

N. dagôs
Ac. dagans
G. dagê
D. dagam

On voit que tous les cas ont une marque différente. Mais l'accent est sur le a, et le finale "s'usent". Ainsi, en vieil haut allemand, on a :

No. tag (le -s a disparu)
Ac. tag
Ge. tages
Da. tage

No. taga
Ac. taga
Ge. tagô
Ac. taga

Et quand se produira la mutation vocalique, entre le vieil haut allemand et le moyen haut allemand, la différence entre [e] et [a] va disparaître :

tag
tag
tages
tage

tage
tage
tagen
tage

"e" est la marque de cinq cas, et deux cas n'ont plus de désinence (ou ont une "désinence zéro").

Le syncrétisme formel peut également jouer entre plusieurs déclinaisons : en vieil-haut-allemand, il existe plusieurs déclinaisons, comme en latin. Dès le gotique, toutes celles qui se terminaient en voyelles évoluent vers -a, puis vers -e.

Certains termes, cependant, gardaient une déclinaison propre. Mais comme ils devenaient des exceptions, l'analogie a fait qu'on les a rangés dans un système qui existait déjà. Sauf quelques exceptions qui se sont maintenues. Par exemple "Hahn", le coq, fait au génitif "Hahns", sauf dans le composé "Hahnenschrei", où il y a une trace de l'ancien génitif en *-en.


II. Syncrétisme fonctionnel

On parle de syncrétisme fonctionnel lorsque deux cas restent différenciés du point de vue formel, mais qu'il n'y a plus de différence de sens entre les deux.

Par exemple, en latin, pour exprimer la qualité propre d'un être humain, on peut utiliser indifféremment :

- le génitif : puer egregiae indolis "un enfant d'un excellent naturel"
- l'ablatif : puer egriegâ indole "un enfant d'un excellent naturel".

Parce que le génitif exprime l'idée de possession (or "l'excellent naturel" est en quelque sort possédé par l'enfant) et que l'ablatif exprime l'accompagnement (or "l'excellent naturel" accompagne en quelque sorte l'enfant"). Les deux sont très proches, donc ils viennent à se confondre.

III. Systèmes de substitution

Lorsque certains cas ne peuvent plus être différenciés formellement, il faut trouver un moyen d'exprimer malgré tout la différence de sens. Les deux moyens privilégiés sont :

- l'article
- les préposition
- l'ordre des mots

En indo-européen et dans les langues les plus archaïques (latin, grec homérique, sanscrit), il n'y avait pas d'article. Mais presque toutes les langues en ont créé un, à partir des démonstratifs (latin "ille" > français "le"), ou des relatifs (allemand "der" = "le" ou "qui"). Et souvent, elles permettent de marquer le cas qui n'est plus marqué par le nom. En effet, l'article :
- est généralement monosyllabique, donc sa voyelle est forcément accentuée, et la consonne qui suit est proche de l'accent. Cela se voit très bien en allemand, où l'article présente différentes voyelles : der, die, das, alors que les noms ne peuvent avoir que des -e(s/n). De même, le datif "dem", alors que le datif faible est en "-en < -em".
- est généralement simple, sans aucune variante (alors qu'il peut existe plusieurs flexions pour les noms, comme en grec).

L'allemand a possué très loin cette logique, puisque il a reporté toute l'expression casuelle ou presque sur l'article, ne laissant au substantif qu'une variation mineure, essentiellement de nombre (der Tag, den Tag, dem Tag...).

Quant au prépositions, elles permettent à l'origine d'expliciter une circonstance. En théorie, par exemple, l'ablatif latin permettait à lui seul de désigner "le lieu d'où l'on vient" (Româ = de Rome"). Mais pour être plus précis, on a utilisé des particules : "de monte" (du haut de la montagne), "a monte" (en venant de la montagne).

Mais à mesure que se produisent des syncrétismes formels, l'emploi des prépositions devient de plus en plus nécessaire. Par exemple, en vieux latin, il y avait un locatif : "Romae" = à Rome, "domi" = dans la maison. Mais il a disparu (sauf pour quelques mots). On a donc utilisé l'ablatif, avec "in" : "in urbe" dans la ville.

Or, l'emploi des préposition est un "piège", parce qu'à partir du moment où l'on met une préposition, le cas ne sert plus à grand-chose. D'ailleurs, dans beaucoup de langues, l'emploi d'un cas précis est obligatoire après telle ou telle préposition (aus, bei, mit, nach, zeit, von, zu + datif en allemand, accusatif en grec moderne, etc.). Donc, la flexion n'est plus nécessaire.

L'ordre des mots est le procédé ultime : quand on ne peut plus faire autrement. En Ancien Français, il y a encore deux cas (nominatif et accusatif), très faiblement marqués par un petit "s", et par la différence d'article

li peres le chien veit = le père voit le chien
le pere li chiens veit = le chien voit le père

La différence est trop faible, et par ailleurs beaucoup de mots ne présente pas de différence (notamment les féminins). Par conséquent, très vite, l'habitude se prend de mettre le sujet en premier.

*

Les trois phénomènes jouent en fait ensemble : deux cas se confondent formellement, donc on confond le sens des deux cas ; le sens des deux cas est très proche, donc on ne fait plus attention à la finale, on trouve un autre moyen de le dire, donc on ne fait plus attention ni à la forme ni au sens du cas, etc. Comme l'a dit Pc2, le génitif n'est pas loin de disparaître en allemand moderne...

Le reste est une question de degré : l'allemand a gardé suffisemment de finales différentes pour que les cas survivent, même si par ailleurs il fait un grand usage des préposition et de l'ordre des mots. L'évolution a peine plus poussée des langues scandinaves a sans doute ruiné l'ensemble du système flexionnel.


*

I still wonder - how come this has happened almost simultaneously in many countries of central Europe and how come that languages like Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian have kept their endings - not to speak of Icelandic?

There is a great difference - and you must know it better than I - between finno-hungarian system and post-indo-europeans system. As far I know, finnish and hungarian have no, properly speaking, flexionnal system, but suffixal system. So far you hitch up in indo-european system, there were not more than 8 cases, so that even in proto-indo-european, ONE case has ever signified MANY functions : what makes easier syncretisms...

If the flexions become ineffective - how come they still work for the icelandic people in the same way they did eight hundred years ago and why did the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes drop their endings?

It is a consequency of what linguists call "wave theory". A specific development, born in a spot, stretches out from that point in circular way, like do waves in water in which you have thrown a stone.

So that the most remote place of this languistic area is thinly affected, or even unaffected by that development.

Moreover, if a place is isolated by see, moutain, etc. so that people could not travel from or into it, this place will not be affected by this development (like a part of the lake, shielded by stone or cane).

The evolution of romanic languages shows a lot of instances of this phaenomenon. E.g. the only romanic language who has still flexions is Rumanian, in the farest part of former roman empire. Portuguese is also very archaic. And Sardinian, whereas Sardinia is close to Italia, is also very archaic, because it is an island, with very few trading from or into it).

Could it be that wars and commercial cooperation or even the church during the 1200-1500 centuries and it's education may have also influenced these languages? Is there a pattern to be seen?

Indeed. Because of that theory : the more the people move, the more the language move.

Conversyly, Christian priests took with them latin-written Bible, and they wrote, learned and even "thought" in that language. The first example of many languages is often a Bible (e.g. gotic). If could have prevented flexionnals system.

sorry for my ulgy english
and good luck for the guy who will translate my french, if tobias needs it.

[ANTHOS]

(Un peu hors sujet désolé)

Salut Sisyphe

I would like to pick your brains.

J'ai recemment entendu que le grec du chypre a des similitudes avec le grec ancien. Je me dis que c'est fort probable que le dialecte chypriote a moins evolué que le grec du 'continent de Grèce' (Mainlaind Greece/Sterea Elladha).

Est-ce qu tu connais quelque chose sur ce sujet?

Merci d'avance.

Andréas

[Toirdhealbhách]

Celtic languages have lost their declension endings during the Vth century AD. The three Gaelic languages have retained declensions without the same kind of endings as before. The three Brythonic languages (Welsh, Cornish, Breton) have completely lost their declensions.

[SubEspion]

J'ai recemment entendu que le grec du chypre a des similitudes avec le grec ancien. Je me dis que c'est fort probable que le dialecte chypriote a moins evolué que le grec du 'continent de Grèce' (Mainlaind Greece/Sterea Elladha).

I have a sheet that I printed from a site about that. I must have forgotten the website anyway. Here is what was written about the Greek from Cyprus.

Les Chypriotes grecs parlent le grec, une langue d'origine indo-européenne, mais quelque peu différente du grec de Grèce. En effet, le grec chypriote, appelé dialecte kypriaki (ou dialecte chypriote), comporte certains traits propres au grec ancien qu'a perdus le grec du continent. La langue grecque chypriote est fortement influencée par son histoire locale et a emprunté beaucoup de mots au latin, à l'italien et au turc.

[Sisyphe]

I would like to pick your brains

Me piquer mon cerveau ? C'est pas bien de voler...

J'ai recemment entendu que le grec du chypre a des similitudes avec le grec ancien. Je me dis que c'est fort probable que le dialecte chypriote a moins evolué que le grec du 'continent de Grèce' (Mainlaind Greece/Sterea Elladha).

Est-ce qu tu connais quelque chose sur ce sujet?

Honnêtement, peu de choses. La fragmentation dialectale de l'aire hellénophone a été très grande jusqu'au XVIIIe siècle, lorsque s'est posée la "question de la langue". Mais à l'exception de certains dialectes centraux (notamment le tsakonien, qui avait pour origine, déjà, un dialecte dorien de l'antiquité ), tous restaient suffisamment cohérents pour que l'intercompréhension fût possible.

On dit effectivement que les dialectes de Chio et de Chypres, pour les raisons que j'ai mentionnées plus haut (linguistique des ondes) ont des traits archaïsants. Si j'en crois Henri Tonnet Histoire du grec moderne INALCO p.221, le chypriote se caractérise notamment :

- Par le maintien des "ν" finaux πακτωμένον (accusatif neutre)
- Par la présence de termes proxparoxytons (accentués sur l'avant-avant-dernière), normalement disparus en grec.
- Par la présence de certaines terminaisons, notamment à la troisième personne du pluriel : ελέγασιν imparfait de λέω, βάζουσιν "ils mettent" (au lieu de -αν et -ουν). Ces formes sont pratiquement du grec ancien.

Exemples tirées des Korastikes de Rizos Néroulos, qui précisément "met en scène" des paysans parlant leurs dialectes.

[ElieDeLeuze]

I still wonder - how come this has happened almost simultaneously in many countries of central Europe and how come that languages like Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian have kept their endings - not to speak of Icelandic?

For Icelandic : isolation and the strong early litterary culture fixing the language very early compared with the rest of Europe. And some german dialects in Switserland are almost identical to middelage german (High-ValaisWallis, Graubünden/Grisons), due to isolation and total social immobilism in the remoted areas in the Alps.

For Hungarian : there is something you got wrong. Hungarian didn't keep its old suffixes, it added new ones. The old locative -tt is very rare (still in postpositions), replaces by three different locative-cases ban/on/haz. The temporal-suffix -kor is so new that it's not subject to the vocal harmony. So Hungarian developped its agglutinating system further during the last thousend years, it didn't just kept old suffixes intact.

Even if it doesn't look like it, the slavic languages have simplified their flexional system, and bulgarian went quite far. But i am not a specialist, it's just what i've read in the cold dark humid libraries of departments of linguistics