Re:New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages
by ashleney on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:35AM
(#36940084)
Languages that lose cases will replace them with adpositions which can then again develop into cases. I unfortunately can't think of any PIE languages but Hungarian has 18 cases while proto-uralic only had 6.
PIE languages are currently in the process of losing cases and we can statistically expect some of them to start gaining cases again sometime in the next few millennias.
Re:New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages
by ashleney on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:40AM
(#36940104)
Languages tend to lose grammatical features (english gender) but also gain them (english habitual tense). A common way you can see languages get complex is due to sound changes making grammar irregular (english past participles).
If true, I'm sure there is some linguistic explanation as to why but I'm not aware of it.
It would seem counterintuitive to me that a language would start out complex and simplify over time, but I'm sure simplicity is - for me as a native English speaker - defined as a non-gendered and mostly positional language.