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Grammar Traces Language Roots
mlewan writes "Researchers use grammar to trace relations between Papuan languages. What is interesting is not that much that they use grammar features to do this, but that they seem to have given up using vocabulary as a help."
Even in England, different regions use different words and pronunciations (which could count as different words). But we all use the same grammar. It's easy to change the sounds of a sentence, but to change the structure requires hefty evolution, and hence a separation of culture.
Argh.
The problem here is, we know it's not just "fuzz". These people are communicating, but like Dolphins (for a good example of undecypherable language), it's very hard for outsiders to have any clue of how to translate.
If we stop looking for how to translate it, we lose all that society has generated in terms of culture and myth, we lose another piece of humanity. Of course, people will argue that this doesn't matter, and I'm certain people will live without it, but it's still humanity, and we should be looking for ways to unite our people and not seperate ourselves.
Lastly, the tools we use to break the code of earthly languages will be invaluable if we ever make contact with other civilizations and intellegences. We can't even decrypt dolphin banter here on earth, and yet when ET phones us we're expected to pick up the phone and talk to him in plain English? Perhaps we've been bombarded by alien signals for hundreds of years now in a multitude of frequencies and different alien languages and simply can't decypher any of them because our linguistics aren't that well developed. And if our linguistics aren't that developed what does that tell you about the rest of our societies? Food for thought.
Language and Communication are two of the most important and employable sciences we humans can study and use. But yes, there's always a chance you can be over examining the issue. I just feel that this isn't one of those cases.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
LOL - exclamatory particle (interjection)
ur - 2nd person singular present tense copula (not marked for aspect like "ub")
so - intensifier (adverb)
rite - adjective modifying the subject of "ur"
Vocabulary is nearly arbitrary, but the range of grammar that is comprehensible to the human mind is limited. Sure, you get polysynthetic and analytic languages, but they are, in the final analysis, reducible to a limited set of methods for operating on vocabulary. Phylolinguistics knows this, and that's what TFA is talking about.
You made many good insights in your post, and the fact that you have at least some familiarity with linguistics shows, which would make sense if you're indeed a professor of linguistics. :) I admit no such claim for myself but do readily confess an interest in the field which I plan to pursue through a SIL course as soon as finances permit. I wonder though if perhaps a comparative grammar would have more weight in a comparative study of linguistic origins rather than just the lexical origins of a language. The case you cite as an example is really it's own rebuttal, is it not? Perhaps I'm misguided (I am an amateur) but every source I've read, as well as the weight of history, seems to point to English having a root in the Germanic branch, yet the words you cite as examples are Latin. As a matter of fact, a vast number of english nouns are borrowed either from Greek or Latin, as a light familiarity with either language would bear out to an english speaker. I've also noted a number of english or latin words were borrowed into Russian when I spent some time familiarizing myself with it last year.
:)
I wonder, are verb forms less likely to be borrowed from outside languages? I haven't noticed as many verbs being borrowed as I have nouns, but perhaps that depends on the context of the borrowing language, and the way they structure their sentences?
*shrugs in ignorance* blah di dah.
On a sidenote, as a non-native English speaker, I have to ask: where would you put 'I ain't got no nose'?
Geographically, I mean.
Ignore this signature. By order.
For a really good question, one should ask oneself how on earth old languages evolved in the first place, since they were alomst uniformly far more complex grammatically than those we speak to day.
This isn't actually all that accurate. For instance, many would say that Latin is more complex than Spanish. But then you get into all the features of Spanish that aren't in Latin, and make Spanish more difficult than Latin.
While English has lost it's case system, it's gender system and numerous other Germanic features, it has gained a massive complexity in word ordering and sentence construction. While in German it's fairly rule based what goes where, in English it's all meaning based. Placing this word here means this, but placing it there means this. Or even so much in that placing the word here makes the sentence grammatical, but if you change this other word, you have to change the position of that word so that the sentence remains grammatical. This is why broken English is so broken. The person has learned the words, and the simple grammar structure, but has failed to grasp that there is an intricate rule set behind the English language of what goes where.
Now, let's jump ship and go to some other languages. People almost universally say that Chinese is hard, because of the tone system where *how* you pronounce Ma changes its meaning between horse, mother, and hemp (just to name the three I remember off the top of my head.) Ok, damn, that *is* hard for someone who isn't used to it. But consider that it has no plural system (thus no mouse/mice exceptions to exist) a regularized orthography (limited number of syllables), etc, etc, etc. And you start learning that once you get past the facade, the language is actually relatively simple.
Now, jump around to Japanese. Japanese has a highly regularized verb grammar, no real plural, and simplified word order. This makes it *very* easy to pick things up. Once you know a word, you can disect out it's regular grammatical structures, and then look up the word for its meaning. Now what could be so hard about *this* language that would make this heavy regularity hard (actually, Japanese regularity is so strong that at least one Japanese book that I learned from taught you patterns, not grammatical structures. Like "verb~ta no ga aru = I have done verb", where as if you look at it, it means, "I have verb-ed". So Japanese is VERY regularized compared to Indo-European languages.) Well, you start learning that there are tons of different words for usually some of the same things that are completely phonetically unrelated, and are used in different SOCIAL situations. For instance, words for "I": watashi, watakushi, atashi, atai, boku, ore, kore, kochira, and literally as many words as Japanese has names, considering that it's not rude in Japanese for a female to "refer to herself in the third person." (which they don't actually do, they just use their name as "I/me") This has generally been considered a feature of high-class females. Now verbs. "kure" is the verb for "to give down", "ageru" is the verb for "to give up", people always "kure" things to you, and you always "ageru" things to others. Do not attempt to tell someone to "sore o agette" (give that "up to" me) Because it's *rude*. Ok, so now "kure" even has a form that is called honorific, it is "kudaseru", who's imperative form is "kudasai", which is now mostly used by them for "please". But now look at what you're saying, "koko ni itte kudasai." (come here) you're literally saying: "here to come-*linking give-down-to-me-most-honorable-one." (drastically overreaching the translation there so you get the idea.)
So, the thing you have to learn is that vocabulary isn't getting any smaller, in fact it's getting larger. It's just also shifting away from certain words, and grammar isn't getting any simpler. (If you want a post about that, ask me about Ebonics being a simplified English.)
I am unamerican, and proud of it!