Loss of Inflection

A major point of contrast between languages comes from the role played by inflection. For example, in a language with inflection, like Spanish, there are dozens of verb forms that express differences in categories such as subject person and tense, as in bebo 'I drink', bebes 'you drink', bebiste 'you drank'. In a language without inflection, such as Vietnamese, the corresponding verb will have just one form: uong 'drink'. But this is not just a property that characterizes individual languages, it also distinguishes different historical stages of the same language. Over the last 1200 years English has lost nearly all of its complex inflectional system, radically transforming its character, and similar developments have occurred in the histories of language all across the world. At first glance this looks simply like decay, and this is often how it figures in the public imagination, as complaints about the death of the 'who' ~ 'whom' distinction in English can attest. But the loss of inflection is a complex and multidimensional process. From the perspective of the word, an inflectional paradigm is a system of interlocking parts, whose network of relationships change in response to any change in its constituents. And from the perspective of the grammar as a whole, a loss in the expressive properties of words will have to be compensated for somehow, for example by using word order and function words to do the same job.

The processes of inflectional loss are a potential source of insight into the workings of grammar, seen from a unique perspective. We exploit this through the following research questions. (1) Are some morphosyntactic features more likely to be lost than others? (2) Are some types of morphological marking more likely to be lost than others? (3) Does the complexity of an inflectional system affect its stability? (4) What is the relationship between inflectional loss and syntactic change? (5) Is the 'natural' loss of inflection different from contact-induced change?

Although many languages have lost some or all of their inflectional systems over the course of their history, we lack satisfactory answers to these questions. This is partly due to the fact that the morphological particulars of each language are idiosyncratic, discouraging large-scale generalizations. And of course the obvious imperfections in the historic record leave large gaps in our knowledge. Therefore we adopt two parallel research strategies. One is to compile a cross-linguistic sample of instances of inflectional loss, comprising all the plausible examples so far described. These will form the basis of a cross-linguistic database whose parameters will be organized around the five research questions. This will ensure breadth of coverage, and allow us to compare sets of examples that previously had been studied only in isolation. The second strategy will be to look in detail at the morphological, syntactic and discourse factors involved. Because this would be difficult or impossible to recover from most of the available data (which is based on textual evidence or reconstruction), we can gain a fair picture of the mechanisms by studying contemporary variation across related languages or varieties of a language, where different degrees of conservation and innovation mirror the historic processes. Therefore we will conduct five in-depth case studies of individual language and dialect groups, in close consultation with chosen experts in these areas.

The loss of inflectional morphology touches on some themes which are of special interest to the the wider public. As linguists it has been our experience that one of the things which people find most compelling about language is its history: where our language comes from, and what direction it is going in. The profound morphological changes that have affected the shape of English make this a particularly rich point of departure, which can be used to engage the public and thereby promote an awareness of linguistic concepts which we expect can be both illuminating and enjoyable.These changes can be seen from a number of perspectives.

First, from a transparently historical viewpoint: older texts, many of them familiar classics, are full of forms that may appear to be random aberrations to the modern reader but which had once had a clear meaning (for example, the contrast between the object form 'you' and the subject form 'ye' as seen in a sentence like 'I will bring you to the man whom ye seek', from the King James Bible).

Second, the different historic pathways followed in different parts of the speech community have led to variation within the contemporary language (for example, the contrast in North America between the forms 'got' and 'gotten', where British English has only 'got'). What appears bizarre or quaint to the speaker of one variety is completely normal to another.

Third, change is an ongoing process and many aspects of the language are in flux. A common reaction is to say that the language is in decline (witness discussions of the loss of 'whom', or the loss of the subjunctive). So long as this view remains at the level of irate letters to newspapers, we may be tempted to disregard it as harmless. However, it can seep into educational and policy thinking, with potentially pernicious results. While the importance of a normative standard should not be dismissed, a clearer awareness of the causes of 'error' may lead to the best way of achieving it.

Fourth, the changes that English has undergone, and continues to undergo, have drastically changed the character of the language. While an English speaker may find many of the categories and forms of a language such as German or Spanish to be strange (e.g. marking the gender of inanimate objects), they will have been found in older stages of English and lost only gradually over the centuries. Drawing these connections may be an effective way of talking about language typology to the wider public, by showing how even unfamiliar language structures are in some sense a part of one's own language.

Expanding on the findings of the project, we will reach out to the public through a weekly blog, in which an instance of morphological change in English is used as the point of departure to expand on one of the four themes outlined above.