Discussion: How do you make a language more innovative?

[Tripwire]

Well, language contact is widely understood as a primary driver of linguistic change.

It is? I'm gonna need a source on that, because I've heard the opposite. We know that languages will diverge at a steady rate even with the almost complete absence of language contact; a good example is the divergence of the Polynesian languages from each other.

I have heard that it's theorized that languages with a large number of speakers have more innovations and that languages with small numbers of speakers tend to be more conservative, but from my understanding this is just a theory and that this topic is contentious.

 

[Gloss]

Contact. Above all else, you need contact with outsiders. Isolated groups tend strongly towards conservatism, see Sardinian, Icelandic, Newfoundland English. A written standard does not necessarily impede innovation, as can be seen with Latin or Greek, which in their spoken forms diverged significantly from their written standards. Another factor is social pressures. Languages change to meet the needs of their speakers. The most usual reason for grammatical structures to change is a large number of second language speakers being added to the community, who naturally favour simpler structures. Religion can have a significant impact on lexis, see the Indic strata in Thai and Bahasa Malayu, which came together with Hinduism, and the Arabic stratum in Bahasa Malayu, which came with Islam. (Note: the Indic strata mostly comprise lexemes related to government and science, while the Malay Arabic stratum largely comprises lexemes related to law and religion.)

The problem is that Occitan, by the 11th century, it's completely surrounded by Romance speeches, would increased contact with those promote innovative change as opposed to intra-Romance linguistic influence?

It is? I'm gonna need a source on that, because I've heard the opposite. We know that languages will diverge at a steady rate even with the almost complete absence of language contact; a good example is the divergence of the Polynesian languages from each other.

I have heard that it's theorized that languages with a large number of speakers have more innovations and that languages with small numbers of speakers tend to be more conservative, but from my understanding this is just a theory and that this topic is contentious.

Well places like Finland, Sardinia and Iceland make that theory seem at least practically true, or at least there is a pattern.

 

[Falecius]

It is? I'm gonna need a source on that, because I've heard the opposite. We know that languages will diverge at a steady rate even with the almost complete absence of language contact; a good example is the divergence of the Polynesian languages from each other.

I have heard that it's theorized that languages with a large number of speakers have more innovations and that languages with small numbers of speakers tend to be more conservative, but from my understanding this is just a theory and that this topic is contentious.

Polynesian, and Austronesian more generally, is quite a special case; it is a single language that spread largely by island-hopping settling groups, who afterwards lost, or diminished, contact. That is obviously a recipe for divergence (each island/island group develops its own variety over time and does not share it with others). It is likely that, even there, the picture is more complex (as the islands were not truly "isolated" all along); but we are still speaking about a group of closely related languages with minimal, if any, contact with any other language outside the Oceanic Austronesian branch.
What I had in mind was primarily contact between different languages of relatively different branches, or different language families altogether.

 

[funnyhat]

Polynesian, and Austronesian more generally, is quite a special case; it is a single language that spread largely by island-hopping settling groups, who afterwards lost, or diminished, contact. That is obviously a recipe for divergence (each island/island group develops its own variety over time and does not share it with others). It is likely that, even there, the picture is more complex (as the islands were not truly "isolated" all along); but we are still speaking about a group of closely related languages with minimal, if any, contact with any other language outside the Oceanic Austronesian branch.
What I had in mind was primarily contact between different languages of relatively different branches, or different language families altogether.

It's fascinated me that the extremely remote islands of the Pacific were settled ages ago, while more accessible islands like Réunion and Mauritius were somehow never settled by people until the colonial era. (Indonesians made the long trip to Madagascar but didn't ever settle the islands before them?)

 

[Falecius]

It's fascinated me that the extremely remote islands of the Pacific were settled ages ago, while more accessible islands like Réunion and Mauritius were somehow never settled by people until the colonial era. (Indonesians made the long trip to Madagascar but didn't ever settle the islands before them?)

There's a theory that the Austronesians settling Madagascar were following a "coastal" route (via India and East Africa) as opposed to straight crossing the Indian Ocean; Madagascar is understood, AFAIK, as a colonial project where proto-Malay or proto-Javanese elites installed an underclass (from Borneo) and then lost interest and let the place develop on its own. But they weren't exploring is search of new places to settle through island-hopping as their Eastern brethren did in the Pacific, they were follwoing trade routes that they may have expanded and enriched but existed already (though they were better than others at long distance sea travel). it is also possible, according to some, that Madagascar had already a native population before Austronesians (of African orgin in all likelyhood). Thinking about it as a matter of trade along known routes explains how the Mascarenes were ignored (nothing of worth there justifying settlement, even if probably some people had come across them; Arab sailors had knowledge of their existence in Medieval times).

 

[Gloss]

Polynesian, and Austronesian more generally, is quite a special case; it is a single language that spread largely by island-hopping settling groups, who afterwards lost, or diminished, contact. That is obviously a recipe for divergence (each island/island group develops its own variety over time and does not share it with others). It is likely that, even there, the picture is more complex (as the islands were not truly "isolated" all along); but we are still speaking about a group of closely related languages with minimal, if any, contact with any other language outside the Oceanic Austronesian branch.
What I had in mind was primarily contact between different languages of relatively different branches, or different language families altogether.

But did the Polynesian languages innovate that much? I'd imagine for the isolated ones to have stayed conservative like Finland, Iceland and Sardinia.

 

[Brunaburh]

I don't know about the idea of Celtic influencing Middle English, but I find intriguing the idea of political disruption causing change, got any more examples of that?

A bit of a late answer, as I've been on holiday, but re. Celtic influence on Middle English, there is an excellent article by McWhorter on this, and that whole edition of English Language and Linguistics provides a very convincing case for it. Re. the Balkans, I actually stated that balanced bilingualism (i.e. bilingualism where no language dominates) causes both lexical and grammatical transfer.

Re. the examples of political change, I'll have a think.

 

[Brunaburh]

Ok, political change speeding up language change: the collapse of the Roman Empire led to a diversification of the Vulgar Latin dialects, the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England mentioned above led to change far too rapid to have been caused by contact alone. The Brythonic language lost all of its nominal and verbal inflection in 4 generations coinciding with the Saxon advent, it has been argued that Vortigern (fl. 450) and Cadfan ap Iago (fl. 610) wouldn't have been able to communicate, but Gildas (died around 570) would have understood them both.

That's ignoring the many cases where political elites deliberately select or even create a new dialect.

 

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

I don't know about technology, between 1700 and 2000 I don't recall many European languages changing immensely, heck most changed before then(great vowel shift for example)

Swedish and German and French and Estonian and Finnish have changed immensely during that period. If you took random speakers from random times of those countries, I believe their speech would be very different. They had dialects and languages that are mostly gone now.

Well... that's because written standards obscure the actual degree of change, that is, the crushing triumph of the standard varieties itself.

Exactly.

 

[Gloss]

Swedish and German and French and Estonian and Finnish have changed immensely during that period. If you took random speakers from random times of those countries, I believe their speech would be very different. They had dialects and languages that are mostly gone now.

Exactly.

1. A couple cases don't make a rule.
2. Decline of dialects is not language change as I meant it.
3. I know just German and I don't see how this "immensely changed", I'm skeptical about French as well.

"Exactly" what? Either technology does increase language change or it doesn't because of mass comunication and faster travel allows for homogeneization, which in itself doesn't preclude linguistic change of the entire standard variety.

 

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

2. Decline of dialects is not language change as I meant it.

Well, it was what both Falecius and me came to think of, and killing off both dialects and regional languages is a massive change.

1. A couple cases don't make a rule.
3. I know just German and I don't see how this "immensely changed", I'm skeptical about French as well.

Of course, if you only look at the standard language and its users, and not what non-standard speakers used, and those were a majority in the beginning of that period, and a dwindling minority now. Consider Platt in northern Germany and Occitan in southern France, both almost completely gone. Southern German dialects are said to have fared better, but I know nothing of those.

In the standard language there are changes as well, and those are what you were after. Standard Swedish has undergone some apparent changes in the 20th century, such as abolishing the last few personal endings of verbs, and some more hidden changes, such as faulty spelling pronunciations becoming normalised. One bottom to top change that the government did fight against, was the shift from a front "sh" to a back "kh", but the people's "kh" won out so far. There are fewer vowels now, but neither of those things are seen in writing. The merging of masculine and feminine genders was a fact in writing already in 1700, long before it was done in speech.

"Exactly" what? Either technology does increase language change or it doesn't because of mass comunication and faster travel allows for homogeneization, which in itself doesn't preclude linguistic change of the entire standard variety.

The "Exactly" was just an agreement concerning the spread of the standard language, but that was not relevant for your purpose.

 

[Gloss]

Well, it was what both Falecius and me came to think of, and killing off both dialects and regional languages is a massive change.

Of course, if you only look at the standard language and its users, and not what non-standard speakers used, and those were a majority in the beginning of that period, and a dwindling minority now. Consider Platt in northern Germany and Occitan in southern France, both almost completely gone. Southern German dialects are said to have fared better, but I know nothing of those.

In the standard language there are changes as well, and those are what you were after. Standard Swedish has undergone some apparent changes in the 20th century, such as abolishing the last few personal endings of verbs, and some more hidden changes, such as faulty spelling pronunciations becoming normalised. One bottom to top change that the government did fight against, was the shift from a front "sh" to a back "kh", but the people's "kh" won out so far. There are fewer vowels now, but neither of those things are seen in writing. The merging of masculine and feminine genders was a fact in writing already in 1700, long before it was done in speech.

The "Exactly" was just an agreement concerning the spread of the standard language, but that was not relevant for your purpose.

The language change we are speaking off is clearly something entirely different from people changing languages, seeing we spoke about innovativness and conservativness of languages and not of decline of speakers of dialects.

German did, in fact, not change immensely and neither did French, what changed is the usage of dialects in Germany and France, that's quite different. Also changing in spelling and formalizing what already changed is, again, not a language innovating, merely the ortography of it., if people started wrtiing German in Chinese character it wouldn't mean German itself changed in its phonology, grammar etc.

 

[DrakonFin]

The language change we are speaking off is clearly something entirely different from people changing languages, seeing we spoke about innovativness and conservativness of languages and not of decline of speakers of dialects.

From a Finnish POV, what you call "conservativeness" and "innovativeness" in language are not exactly clear-cut things. Consider a language that takes in a lot of loan words, like Swedish. And then consider a language that invents a lot of new words, instead of accepting loans, like Finnish. Some might say that the latter one is more "innovative", creating new words instead of just uncritically adopting existing ones.

To answer, in part, your question in the OP: how to make Finnish more "innovative", as you term it: stop Finland from ever becoming independent. Keep Finland a part of Sweden or Russia. Without the Finns being able to control the development of the Finnish language themselves, and without a strong nationalist movement to have an effect on the language, the Finnish language would incorporate a lot of words and features from Swedish and/or Russian. Eventually, it would go the way of OTL Karelian: once a strong variant or dialect of Finnish (if not an entirely independent tongue), today it is a dying thing, due to Soviet and Russian policies.

Personally, I'd say that this sort of a development would hasten the marginalization and disappearance of Finnish as an independent language. A strong, dominant language like English can take in a lot of loan words and features from other languages, and keep its character and strong position. But a small language with just a few million or less speakers must have some sort of self-protection to keep existing in the long term.

 

[Gloss]

This is going off the tangent but considering this thread is heavy with good stuff, could we call it Mandarin instead of just Chinese?

Chinese characters are Chinese not Mandarin.

 

[funnyhat]

1. A couple cases don't make a rule.
2. Decline of dialects is not language change as I meant it.
3. I know just German and I don't see how this "immensely changed", I'm skeptical about French as well.

"Exactly" what? Either technology does increase language change or it doesn't because of mass comunication and faster travel allows for homogeneization, which in itself doesn't preclude linguistic change of the entire standard variety.

Written French (the standard form anyway, as opposed to slang/text-speak) has not changed all that much in that time period. The works of Molière (mid-XVII century) for example are still generally understandable to modern francophone readers - they are more accessible than Shakespeare is to modern anglophone readers.

Spoken French has changed to a larger extent, but that's probably true for any language over 300 years.

 

[Gloss]

Written French (the standard form anyway, as opposed to slang/text-speak) has not changed all that much in that time period. The works of Molière (mid-XVII century) for example are still generally understandable to modern francophone readers - they are more accessible than Shakespeare is to modern anglophone readers.

Spoken French has changed to a larger extent, but that's probably true for any language over 300 years.

In which way did spoken French change? To the extent of the Great Vowel shift?

 

[funnyhat]

In which way did spoken French change? To the extent of the Great Vowel shift?

There have been changes in both pronunciation and more generally in the way people use the language.

The R sound has changed from a trilled sound similar to Italian/Spanish to the uvular sound similar to German. This process is just about complete in Europe but is ongoing in Canada and Africa, where you can hear both R sounds.

The -oi has changed dramatically: moi used to be pronounced like "moué" and now is "mwa". This change is ongoing in Canada : the "moué" pronunciation still exists but is becoming stigmatized. So the French word royal was once pronounced very similarly to the Spanish real but now is totally different. (Interestingly, there is the city of Montréal (an archaic name) but the mountain in the middle of it is called Mont-Royal, which is modern.)

French used to have numerous diphtongues, which helps to explain a lot of spellings. These are all gone now from European French though some survive in Canada. Likewise, a and â traditionally designate two different "a" sounds (closed and open) but this also is disappearing in France (though less so elsewhere).

Regarding usage, some verb tenses (most notably the passé simple, the French form of the preterite) have just dropped out of use in speaking. The passé simple is still used in literature but would be considered strange and pompous to use in speech. The passé composé tense (which used to only serve as the present perfect) has replaced it nearly 100% of the time.

Finally, whereas negation in French originally occurred with just "ne" before a verb, and then (by Molière's time) had become a pair (ne . . . pas/point), in the spoken language nowadays it's very common to drop the "ne" and just use the second part (although in writing, both parts are still used). So "I don't like" was originally "Je n'aime" and then became "Je n'aime pas" and now (in speaking) is frequently "J'aime pas".

 

[Gloss]

There have been changes in both pronunciation and more generally in the way people use the language.

The R sound has changed from a trilled sound similar to Italian/Spanish to the uvular sound similar to German. This process is just about complete in Europe but is ongoing in Canada and Africa, where you can hear both R sounds.

The -oi has changed dramatically: moi used to be pronounced like "moué" and now is "mwa". This change is ongoing in Canada : the "moué" pronunciation still exists but is becoming stigmatized. So the French word royal was once pronounced very similarly to the Spanish real but now is totally different. (Interestingly, there is the city of Montréal (an archaic name) but the mountain in the middle of it is called Mont-Royal, which is modern.)

French used to have numerous diphtongues, which helps to explain a lot of spellings. These are all gone now from European French though some survive in Canada. Likewise, a and â traditionally designate two different "a" sounds (closed and open) but this also is disappearing in France (though less so elsewhere).

Regarding usage, some verb tenses (most notably the passé simple, the French form of the preterite) have just dropped out of use in speaking. The passé simple is still used in literature but would be considered strange and pompous to use in speech. The passé composé tense (which used to only serve as the present perfect) has replaced it nearly 100% of the time.

Finally, whereas negation in French originally occurred with just "ne" before a verb, and then (by Molière's time) had become a pair (ne . . . pas/point), in the spoken language nowadays it's very common to drop the "ne" and just use the second part (although in writing, both parts are still used). So "I don't like" was originally "Je n'aime" and then became "Je n'aime pas" and now (in speaking) is frequently "J'aime pas".

That sounds like you still would be able to understand it, is it hard to do so?

 

[funnyhat]

That sounds like you still would be able to understand it, is it hard to do so?

Eh . . . probably, but there would be some confusion. It would take some adaptation. A lot of European speakers have some trouble understanding Canadian French (which preserves some of these sounds) at first. I spent a couple of years in Montréal, and when I first got there it was a little challenging to understand people, but then I seemed to get habituated after a few days. (When they spoke in standard language anyway. When they used slang it was tougher.)