Do we in modern times see languages with simple grammars develop complex grammars over time?

you might just be confusing complexity with big words or large tables of grammatical affixes. over time, languages tend to either get more synthetic (closer to a 1=1 correspondence between words and morphemes) or agglutinative (many more morphemes per word), and it wraps around at the end - premium synthetic languages then start tacking words together, some start making other constructions, and suddenly you're on the agglutinative side!

Latin is another standard example of a language losing complexity due to being learned by large numbers of adults. Greek still has a system of noun cases. Spanish and Portuguese don't.

Hmm. In computer science, can we say that one language is more complex than another based on the size of the BNF needed to describe the language?

Even in linguistics, can't you say that one language has 8 cases, and another only has 4? Wouldn't that make the one with 8 more complex, in at least some sense?

It used to!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-problem-with-you/i...

You're getting close to something interesting. Cases are an example of expressing a linguistic distinction through the use of a particular kind of syntax.

It is also common for the same distinctions to be expressed by other means that people generally agree are also syntactic. An English finite passive verb has to be expressed periphrastically, using a dedicated auxiliary verb that exists for that purpose (be or get); the verb will be inflected into a form determined by the governing auxiliary verb, but no passive form exists that can stand as a finite verb.

But this is still essentially a use of syntax to deal with what are generally felt to be "grammatical" categories. What is discussed much less often is that languages may scrupulously observe a standard distinction between grammatical categories without having any syntactic apparatus to accommodate that distinction. The only term I know related to this is "lexical aspect", but the phenomenon exists beyond just aspect. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_aspect )

Two examples between Mandarin Chinese and English:

1. In Mandarin, verbs may be given a "resultative complement" expressing a result of the action. (This has many syntactic consequences.) A complement can be almost anything indicating a state, but there are some standard ones, and the complement that regularly indicates "success of the action" is 到. Thus, by a regular and productive construction of Mandarin grammar, we can observe the following verb pairs:

    看 look   看到 see
    找 search 找到 find
    听 listen 听到 hear

2. If you study ancient European languages, you'll hear about the locative case, already long dead by the time of the ancient language that you're actually studying. It was used when a noun was conceived of as being a location rather than an object. (And in classical Latin, it survives in fossilized, unproductive form in a few common locational words like "home" and "the ground".)

English does not have a locative case, and also doesn't really observe any distinction between locations and other types of nouns. There are some restrictions, but they are easy to explain as being required by the semantics of locations rather than the grammar of English per se.

Mandarin also does not have a locative case, or any noun cases at all. But it nevertheless maintains a robust distinction between ordinary noun phrases and locational phrases. It is not possible to (grammatically) express in Mandarin that something is "on the table"; you have to say that it is "on the top of the table".

It is surprisingly difficult to talk about this distinction without imagining that locative case is involved. Certainly the background phenomenon is the same. Certainly this is deeply embedded within the syntax of Mandarin. But you would need to posit a "phrasal case"[1] which is entirely unexpressed in order to actually call it a "case".

[1] CGEL attempts to preserve the idea that the English clitic 's is a case marker by stating that it applies genitive case to an entire noun phrase. (This is a necessary analysis, since the clitic attaches to the last word of a noun phrase whether that word is a noun or not, but its meaning applies to the head of the noun phrase, which is not especially likely to also be the last word.) I don't like this; I think a better analysis would be to just give up on the idea of genitive case in English. But if you like the idea of phrasal case, locational phrases in Mandarin are certainly an area where you could look for some support.

You might be thinking of the notion of MDL (minimum description length), which is an information-theoretic notion of complexity which boils down to the question "how long is the program that generates this data". To use minimum description length, however, you need to have a fixed programming language. So if you have a Python program that generates all of English and all of Japanese, then you could compare the complexity of those two languages.

However, this measure of complexity can't be stated absent the assumption that these languages are generated using Python -- that is, the fact that language A is more complex than language B in Python does not entail that language A is more complex than language B in the mind (using the "mind's programming language").

And herein lies the big question for a lot of linguists: what's the programming language that the mind uses to generate language?

Let me know if you are curious about anything, I am happy to answer.

I am obviously biased as a native speaker, but I am surprised it is considered the hardest language to learn. Yes sentences have an unusual order, and most pronouns and determinants are embedded as postfixes of other words, especially verbs. However, phonetically it is almost indistinguishable from Spanish at this point. The alphabet is latin and each letter directly corresponds to a single sound (except for silent h). Spelling is "as it sounds", very consistent and much simpler than other languages I have learned. The vocabulary includes large quantities of romance (from latin, mostly Spanish) loan words that will sound familiar to most Europeans. And the sentence structure and vocabulary are often (incorrectly) streered towards Spanish/French patterns in casual speech.

The Vasconic Substrate Hypothesis suggests that Basque was a major language in Europe from prehistory or at least the neolithic, and that it influenced most modern European languages. That's rather a stretch, modern western European languages are mostly a mix between Indo-European variants and Latin, to a larger or smaller degree. Claiming another pre-indo-european layer under all that, I mean, sure, maybe, but it is diluted to an extent that makes it rather irrelevant.

The evidence for that is very weak, it depends how literally you interpret it. I think it is arrogant to suggest that those ancient languages were basque, rather modern basque has some distant roots in those pre-into-european languages. In my opinion, the more correct way of expressing it would be that this proto-basque was part of a large family of related languages spoken in Europe during the neolithic. There is no proper evidence that proto-basque was widespread, it's just that it is the only preserved remnant from that linguistic era at large.

This is mostly a theoretical exercise, extrapolating back patterns observed in Latin loanwords changed after being absorbed and differences between modern dialects.

Brief parenthesis: There are still significant differences in the language within a couple hundred km, to the point where it can be very hard to understand each other. An effort was made during the 60s to define a Standard Basque (Euskara Batua: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Basque) for education, bureaucracy and law. It is comparable to the unification of Mandarin Chinese at a smaller scale.

Back to the topic of older basque. You have to consider that there's a clear record of the basque living under roman rule, and the region has been under larger powers (but also relatively isolated and autonomous) for its entire history. The intermixing with romance languages started all the way back with original Latin, and the discovery discussed in the article also shows heavy influence from pre-roman iberian languages in the use of their alphabet, even if the languages probably had different roots (iberian is indo-european, basque not).

Nevertheless, the language in this discovery is not really considered basque but more of an ancestor. There is a large gap in the written record, very little has been found between early Roman times and the first writings in modern Basque well into the Middle Ages, at which point heavier intermixing with the rest of Europe started during the 1500s with the pioneering of large-scale whaling and a thriving ship-building economy. It's not really clear when modern basque started, and it has been heavily influenced by other languages pretty much since the neolithic.

(Kind of embarrassing to ask here since I'm a spaniard and I should know more, but since you're already discussing it...)

But I have friends from inner Gipuzkoa with a very strong accent, and it's pretty hard to understand people from Zuberoa (one of the French provinces) and particularly certain towns and small cities (not always rural) from inner Bizkaia (where Bilbo is).

Not sure how much they stick to Batua in school, but at least it seems like their family and environment has a bigger influence. Of course they understand Batua but tend to stick to their regional dialect when speaking.

But no, it is definitely not limited to the older generation.

On diffs on writting in "Standard" and speaking, Andalusia can be hardcore mode too, specially Cadiz. A Uni student can have a vastly different register on writting for terms at class compared to the day to day speaking.

I understand that there is not enough extant Iberian[1] for it to be classified. Did you mean Celtiberian[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberian_language

This effort has been relatively successful. A significant majority of students do all their studies, including university, fully in basque. There are many families that exclusively speak basque at home. And traditional basque public holidays and sports are prominent, popular, and frequent throughout the year.

There is a serious concern however, that Basque is becoming entrenched into a language only for education, bureaucracy and family life. It is much less popular in the streets and between friends, especially in the capitals of the provinces. This is partially affected by the significant reduction in funding for basque TV, films and dubbing, especially when it comes to cartoons for young children, as well as sketch comedy, which were so influential to my generation (funnily enough, basque dubbed anime was quite big!).

Nevertheless, the fertility-rate in the Basque country has actually been one of the lowest in Europe for the last few years. The conversation around it is more about the economy than culture. It is already seriously affecting primary schools, which are starting to compete a lot more and some closing down. There are bigger problems in the public conscience lately (COVID, Ukraine, recession...), and it will take at least another generation for the consequences of the low fertility rate to be felt, but there is an awareness of looming demographic trouble.

Another one of those classic HN quotes!

There are a few factors.

Generally the Spanish basque provinces have a significantly larger population, larger economy and more autonomy than the French provinces. In France Basque is not an official language in the region and is only available with private schooling. France is also very Paris-centric and very little support is given to the fringes. In Spain we keep the vast majority of our taxes, have our own local parliament and president, as well as fully independent social security, healthcare, police and education, almost all in basque, public and private.

As a result, the vast majority of support for Basque has been focused on the Spanish regions, which might have increased the separation. There is indeed a Standard Basque defined during the 60s for education, media and governance. Not sure if she is referring to this, it did consider all seven major dialects, including the French ones, but it is quite biased to the dialect from the central province (Gipuzkoa) and is significantly different to dialects at the edges of the region, to the point where mutual comprehension is a legitimate challenge.

The French dialects also have, well, a strong French accent, including different vowels, I also struggle to understand them. Whereas the Spanish dialects have almost the exact same phonemes as Spanish. It would probably sound like Spanish to a non-speaker, even if the grammatical differences are vast.

It is also possible that she is referring to the fact that many people in the Spanish provinces just don't speak Basque very well. This is actually because of a positive achievement: most students study in basque now. The thing is that often their parents don't speak it, they tend to become friends with others with Spanish speaking families, and they end up just using Basque for school. And in school they learn to understand the language and write it well, but struggle to speak it, often with a heavy dose of Spanish elements and sentence patterns.

None of this is all that new though, unless by "recent years" she means the last 30, which is not unreasonable.

Ziberuan dialect = hard mode.

Labort dialect = easy-medium mode to understand Batua.

Also, if a Batua speaker it's used to speak the Western subdialect (Biscaian) and unadvertedly introduce "jargon" into Batua, it would be difficult because that dialect has lots of Latin/Castillians borrowings.

Spanish has similar issues too. Pick up a Chilean/Argentinian "chav" and partner it with a Murcian teen guy. If they mainly speak in their subdialects, either guys will have a hard time, even if both speak Spanish.

OFC if they keep a conversation on "semi-standard" Spanish they'll understand the 99%, 100% if both are speaking about academic terms or just a random serious article/news in a newspaper/web site.

Still, the RAE dictionary in Spain is huge, it covers ALL the manerism/idioms/jargon of Spanish all over the world, so any speaker from Mexico to the Patagonia or Iberia can easily query the online RAE dictionary for local terms such as molar, rentar, pasada, chévere, chido, tío (not in familiar terms), bacán and so on.

I tell you this as the son of someone who used to work in the basque country (I am spanish). A vulgar basque was spoken in the rural areas only. They were desperate at the end of the 70s to find teachers for it.

Nowadays there is a myth built on top of a language that, it is nice to not make things disappear, but it is basically a reconstruction. It is called "euskera batúa".

I can say with confidence that we can speak more correct latin or catalan than basque when thinking about real language heritage. Basque is just a reconstruction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language_question

So regardless of whether there's a "true" Basque language, it certainly could have gone through a period of conscious, top-down reconstruction after some period when middle-class academics (and politicians, usually) who would be interested in either rediscovering or purifying the language, or just plain looking for a nationalist project to rally around couldn't find anyone left who spoke the language at all, spoke it purely enough for them, or even spoke it prettily enough for their image of what the language should be.

I don't know that this happened to Basque, but it happens all the time.

Standard spanish is used all around in the sense that: people have known it for a long time. We understand it all. Of course there are localisms, but the same way Andalucia, Extremadura or Murcia speak a very strong dialect, in my area or Valladolid, Salamanca, Madrid or even Cataluña people speak a very standard one. In fact, the areas you said are the most "dialectizied". The rest of Spain is way more standard when speaking it.

Pero no me informo por canales políticos exclusivamente. Sé de lo que hablo, créeme.

Las diferencias entre euskalkis son como las que puede haber entre un murciano, un chileno, un cubano, un colombiano y un mexicano. El léxico puede variar enormemente, incluso las conjugaciones verbales auxiliares (dot/dut/det) pero el idioma es el mismo. En castellano pasa igual con dile/decile al otro lado del charco en el cono sur.

Sobre el uso político, para mí portugués y gallego podrían ser el mismo idioma perfectamente salvo diferencias morfológicas triviales, cosa que ya ocurre de forma clara en la conjugación verbal argentina, chilena y uruguaya.

You can believe it or not. That is not to say that it is not the local language of that area. But they make it look like it was the only, true one, when this has not been the case for centuries. The same valencian was the original in my area. But it was mixed with castilian (what you know as spanish is castilian) for centuries.

What happens nowadays is that they force and do not let people study in spanish in some areas. Spanish have the right to study in the language that they deem appropriate from the official ones in their area. And so that you see I am not inventing anything, because people will jump to me it is not true. It is in fact true that for years there have been people who cannot study in spanish at school in the public system, a few days ago we even had in Mallorca a resolution from judges that denied the right for a student to study in spanish!

Here, catalans denying 25% of teaching in spanish ignoring even court resolutions: https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2022-05-31/la-generalita...

My first gf when I was young had to come to my area because she was denied the right to study in spanish in public school. This is not a joke, it happens all the time for years.

Here a student that cannot (has not the right, according to judges) study in spanish, when it is a guaranteed right. This shows the politization of the court system, bc it does not exist in the law, no matter their twisted argument, a denial of the right for a person to study in an official language in that community (county equivalent), yet it is happening: https://www.elmundo.es/baleares/2022/11/14/6372645121efa0721...

Here basques trying to kick out spanish from the education system: https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/espana/2022/09/18/gobi...

This is a topic where they typically say (the nationalists) that since spanish is everywhere they should be able to deny the right to study in spanish, bc they will learn it anyway. I am all for letting people to study in basque, catalan , valencian (which I can speak also) or what they choose.

I am, at the same time, totally against the public system forcing you to choose one of the languages they decide.

This is continuosly used with political goals.

Yes there was a large effort during the 60s to recover the language and unify it in order to use it in education and governance, comparable to the unification of Mandarin Chinese.

It had to be recovered because using the language was literally criminalized during the dictatorship, so yes, it had to go underground and was forgotten to an extend for a generation. But still, it was spoken in homes in both rural and urban areas, and my father's family attended an illegal basque school during the dictatorship, as well as having to bribe officials to give basque names to their children.

It is definitely true that basque has many many loanwords from spanish and other romance languages. There is in fact significant evidence (including this latest discovery), that this intermixing dates all the way back to the Roman occupation with original Latin, before spanish existed, so it makes sense that there is significant shared vocabulary.

Hey, noone said this! Read back what I said. What I said is that the state of the language was bad. Because it was only spoken in villages not in urban area and for lack of standardization/normalization. So they did have to reconstruct a part of it.

> And it had to be recovered because using the language was literally criminalized during the dictatorship.

As far as I understand (know that my family if of valencian speakers, so do not think I am talking out of thin air) local languages were out of the education system but not forbidden or criminalized. Namely: it was not illegal to speak those. It is just that they were not used in the education or administration, which I admit it can have an impact.

> having to bribe officials to give basque names to their children.

Interesting, did not know about this, but yes, I do believe it.

I can read Leizarraga's writtings from the 16-17th century by just using the Batua.

Batua it's just Basque built around Gipuzkoan-Navarrese-Labourtan.

Kinda like yours from Valladolid-Salamanca-Madrid in Castillian. I remind you that the 90% of the world DOESN'T speak like in the former Castilles, but like Andalucia and the Canary Islands.

No one speaks "Español Unificado". No one. Pick up any Galician, Asturian, Extremadura, Andalucian, Canarian or worse, any Spanish speaker from the US to the Patagonia. No one will speak like the Castillians, ever. Even if RTVE has millions of speakers. That's it.

The same thing happens in English with the RP. Everyone in Europe learns BBC English, but no one speaks like a BBC news anchor IRL, maybe the ex-Queen.

On a global scale, the so-called Spanish from the RAE, as if it was spoken from Perez-Reverte, it's the minorized one.

Also, just cross the pond. Even those created "Español neutro" for media, yet no one uses it daily.

Let's get serious: if everyone used their Spanish dialect in a hard way, the 80% of the Hispanic world wouldn't understand half of what were they saying.

The same with Basque. Or... English:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8

This is true for every language in the world with any relevance. You said nothing here.

> Let's get serious: if everyone used their Spanish dialect in a hard way, the 80% of the Hispanic world wouldn't understand half of what were they saying.

I was not making that point. The point was that it was a more-or-less dead language except in a few areas. I am not saying recovering it is a bad idea either. But since that was the situation, then it needed to be reconstructed by taking many borrowings, whether you like it or not.

This is not the case for spanish or english or chinese, with all their dialects, that are spoken by a big amount of people. Of course, languages keep evolving and what is true today maybe will not tomorrow. But that is another story.

So what. RAE did the same, back in they day they were against anglicisms, italianisms and galicisms. They had to step back against cocktail, carnet, chófer, sonata, acuarela and lots of borrowed words.

This can be explained as a continuation of an old rule that said that only living beings (marked by endings such as -us, -a; -i, -ae) could be "active" subjects.

A "thing" doesn't have agency; it can't "do" anything to something or someone else – in other words, it can't be the subject of a transitive verb. It can only be either the subject of an intransitive verb, or the object of a transitive verb – and thus in Latin takes the endings -um, -a in either event.

Bonus amat bonum: The good (man) loves what is good. (Meaning 1)

Bonus amat bonum: The good (man) loves the good (man). (Meaning 2)

Bonum est bonum: What is (a) good (thing) is good.

This is exactly the same pattern as in ergative grammar: the object of a transitive verb has the same case as a thing that is the subject of an intransitive verb.

Incidentally, English has a very similar pattern: most animate pronouns have nominative–accusative alignment, while nouns and inanimate pronoun have neutral alignment. It’s pretty common in Indo–European languages.

(Actually, come to think of it, in German only the masculine differentiates between nominative and accusative.)

That is true, but it's not really an example of Latin neuter nouns being subject to a fundamental rule specifying that the nominative case can never be distinct from the accusative case.

The rule exists, but the second declension forms are very standardized. You could equally use them to argue that Latin has a fundamental rule specifying that the ablative case and the dative case are always identical. (Though for that argument, the first declension would present a problem.)

Latin requires that neuter nominatives be identical with neuter accusatives even when the nominative form is unconstrained by its declension (only possible in the 3rd declension), and even when the nominative form is, by the standards of Latin, utterly bizarre. The neuter plural nominative of hic is haec (identical to the feminine singular, also an interesting [but not universal] pattern in Latin), and so is the neuter plural accusative. This is a word in the second declension, but it's a wildly illegal form for that declension.

And yes, as far as I'm aware, this treatment of neuters is an Indo-European universal rather than being anything specific to Latin.

This is not quite true; it is widely accepted that certain languages are less complex than most others. A few languages can't be less complex without most languages being more complex.

Interestingly, among the examples of languages losing complexity due to real-world interactions are English and Mandarin Chinese, both of which endless people will be happy to tell you are uniquely difficult.

This is just false, it is not widely accepted.

See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33629425

I am a linguist, that's where my knowledge of what is widely accepted in our field comes from.