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From: selvakum@valluvar.uwaterloo.ca (C.R. Selvakumar)
Subject: Re: Which family is Japanese in?
Sender: news@novice.uwaterloo.ca (Mr. News)
Message-ID: <DF7ssF.6H6@novice.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 17:33:51 GMT
References: <DDxzLD.E5n@crash.cts.com> <4323ua$2oo@netsrv2.spss.com> <DEtBGD.Lww@novice.uwaterloo.ca> <43a192$r4s@netsrv2.spss.com>
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In article <43a192$r4s@netsrv2.spss.com>,
Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <DEtBGD.Lww@novice.uwaterloo.ca>,
>C.R. Selvakumar <selvakum@valluvar.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>Syntactic features are pretty easily changed or borrowed.  Some examples:
>
>1) The Balkan Sprachbund, in which features such as a postposed definite
>2) While most IE languages were losing cases, Lithuanian and Latvian have
>3) Modern spoken French seems to be undergoing a development in which
>4) Spanish and Quechua, which have coexisted in the Andes for 500 years,
[..]
>That's just off the top of my head; a few hours in a library would turn
>up many more examples.  Your confidence that syntactic features are
>resistant to borrowing stands on shaky ground.

    Many thanks for providing such a solid material to pursue.
    I did not mean to imply impossibility of syntacical change; 
    I had the feeling that the syntactic features are *more* resistant 
    to change than for 'replacing or acquiring words - borrowing words'. 
    For syntactic features to change it might take much longer 
    than for words to change. [ I'm aware of my native language
    features influencing even while constructing the previous sentence. 
    A more 'natural' English sentence *might* be: "It might take much longer
    for a syntactic feature to udergo a change than words" (??)]
    I won't be surprised if the time taken between two interacting languages
    to effect a syntactic change might be longer than the average
    lifespan of a word. [ I'm aware that many things are not defined
    here : 'average life span' '*a* word', '*a* syntactic change' etc. 
    essentially making a nonsense of my statement. Human perception
    is more imaginative and perceptive and I'm banking on it :-) ]
    I hope you get my message. I still feel that syntactic features are
    harder to change than words. I think it is even possible to borrow
    words for such common 'things' as 'hand', 'leg' 'dad' but far harder to  
    effect a syntactic change. ( If you know the kind of urban lingo in
    southern India you'll readily agree with me)  

    Regards, Selva
     
    


