Conjugation Hatin'

[Giovanni Schwartz]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/75212/


If anyone ever wants to learn a language with 0 conjugations, try Chinese.

[mic0]

Can anyone who knows more about the history of the English language explain why that happened, by the way? Is it just remnants of more inflections that English used to have but no longer uses? That is my first instinct.

But yeah, Chinese is great. Inflectional endings? Meh - use context for everything!

[Giovanni Schwartz]

That's right!

And, beyond that, Chinese is just so freaking interesting to learn. And I say that after having studied Spanish fairly extensively, and German briefly. So I've got all the major language families covered except Arabic. (right?)

[Yarjka]

My daughter is at that lovely age where she says things like "we was running" ... and other than sounding wrong, it doesn't actually impede communication much at all.

[Yarjka]

IANAL (I am not a linguist)

Isn't part of the explanation that English dropped its second-person singular form 'thou' so we now use the plural form 'you' to refer to both singular and plural (thus losing the -est ending that we see in KJV English? (obviously we lost the -eth ending for third-person singular at some point as well, but I'm assuming maybe that morphed into -s at some point for phonological reasons?))

[Marduk]

Both thou and you were second person singular. You is formal, thou is informal.

[Katya]

Can anyone who knows more about the history of the English language explain why that happened, by the way? Is it just remnants of more inflections that English used to have but no longer uses? That is my first instinct.

I just wrote a lengthy comment on the question because I was reading about the phenomenon on WALS. Short version: I didn't find an explanation for why English has the particular verb forms it does, and the pattern in English is actually a little unusual (it's more common to have the 3rd person singular be identical to the 2nd person singular), but, overall, it's really common for languages to collapse verb forms so that not all persons and numbers are distinct (it happened in over 40% of the languages in WALS that had any person/number marking at all).

Also, I think you'd expect languages to generally go from more distinct forms -> fewer distinct forms rather than the other way around. (Some day, all languages will be like Chinese! )

[Portia]

Can anyone who knows more about the history of the English language explain why that happened, by the way? Is it just remnants of more inflections that English used to have but no longer uses? That is my first instinct.

I just wrote a lengthy comment on the question because I was reading about the phenomenon on WALS. Short version: I didn't find an explanation for why English has the particular verb forms it does, and the pattern in English is actually a little unusual (it's more common to have the 3rd person singular be identical to the 2nd person singular), but, overall, it's really common for languages to collapse verb forms so that not all persons and numbers are distinct (it happened in over 40% of the languages in WALS that had any person/number marking at all).

Also, I think you'd expect languages to generally go from more distinct forms -> fewer distinct forms rather than the other way around. (Some day, all languages will be like Chinese! :D )

I'm glad someone commented on this. "Just because" doesn't really cover it. You can look at verb conjugations in German to get an idea of where we were coming from. And irregular verbs often are more Germanic.

[Katya]

I'm glad someone commented on this. "Just because" doesn't really cover it.

Well, except that in the end, it kind of does come down to "just because," because we don't have an explanation for the specific changes, just an idea of the general phenomenon. We can predict that language will change and we can observe that certain kinds of changes are more or less likely, but in the end it's all kind of a crapshoot.

[Tally M.]

I figured someone else would have a better answer. No one else was picking it up, it was getting over hours, and I couldn't quickly find something that gave a decent answer.

So, thanks, Katya.

[Portia]

I'm glad someone commented on this. "Just because" doesn't really cover it.

Well, except that in the end, it kind of does come down to "just because," because we don't have an explanation for the specific changes, just an idea of the general phenomenon. We can predict that language will change and we can observe that certain kinds of changes are more or less likely, but in the end it's all kind of a crapshoot. ;)

Huh. So it's not like a vowel shift, we don't see a particular pattern?

[Yarjka]

Both thou and you were second person singular. You is formal, thou is informal.

Well, what was plural then?

[Portia]

Both thou and you were second person singular. You is formal, thou is informal.

Well, what was plural then?

Youse.

[mic0]

I'm pretty sure that, like in Russian (and... French, I think? Not sure), "you" could be either [singular & formal] or [plural & informal].

[Portia]

I'm pretty sure that, like in Russian (and... French, I think? Not sure), "you" could be either [singular & formal] or [plural & informal].

French: tu (singular, informal)
vous (all plural, singular formal, in some contexts)

[Katya]

I'm glad someone commented on this. "Just because" doesn't really cover it.

Well, except that in the end, it kind of does come down to "just because," because we don't have an explanation for the specific changes, just an idea of the general phenomenon. We can predict that language will change and we can observe that certain kinds of changes are more or less likely, but in the end it's all kind of a crapshoot.

Huh. So it's not like a vowel shift, we don't see a particular pattern?

Can you give an example of the type of vowel shift you mean? (I can think of a few different ones, and I don't know which you're referring to.)

[Digit]

Tagalog verbs are the same for I, you familiar, you formal/plural, he, she, we, they. But they do have conjugation for tense. An interesting thing about that language unrelated to verbs is that they have two forms of we, one including the one being spoken to and one not.
E.g.,
Takbo tayo. We (you and me) run.
Takbo kami. We (my other friend here and me, but not you) run.

[No Dice]

Both thou and you were second person singular.

This isn't the whole story, though. The KJV—where many people encounter thou—only uses thou, and not you, as the second-person singular. The translators used you as the second-person plural's object case, and ye was their second-person plural's subject case. See, e.g., John 3:9-12, where Christ shifts from talking just to Nicodemus to referring to everyone's rejection of his teaching:

9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

11 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

Originally, thou was the second-person singular, and ye was the second-person plural. But thou became associated with familiarity, and you showed up and was associated with formality (although "formal" isn't always the right word—people used thou in prayer because God is (should be) familiar, and you with strangers because they were not, so deference/respect doesn't track onto it perfectly like we sometimes expect).

[Marduk]

We call it "formal" but you're right, it doesn't exactly translate that way to native English speakers, who are unused to having two forms of second person singular. Thou and you translate almost perfectly to "tu" and "usted."

[Portia]

Can you give an example of the type of vowel shift you mean? (I can think of a few different ones, and I don't know which you're referring to.)

The Great Vowel Shift was the one that came to mind.