Talk:Deflexion (linguistics)

"Decay" / History

On the grand scale, the phenomenon was already observed in the 19th century and is part of what has been referred to as the "decay" of the Indo European languages. Some mention of that, both history and perhaps more detail on the nature of the simplification and how it relates to non IE groups like Sino-Tibetan which lack the decaying structures completely. Lycurgus (talk) 03:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Deflextion is limited to inflectional languages. It is much more than just a simple decay, since also the syntax is affected. The ultimate result could be an analytic language, maybe even languages of the Sino-Tibetan kind, although it is not sure the process is one-directional by definition. More than some kind of innate linguistic law, the deflexion process is linked to cultural change and language contact. Rokus01 (talk) 21:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Examples

Article could do with some examples, in modern or old versions of the languages named. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.159.74.100 (talk) 13:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Opposite of deflexion

What is the opposite of deflexion. How do languages form inflections?

216.57.220.87 (talk) 22:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent question. So much is written about how languages lose inflection, but very little about how they gain them in the first place. One sometimes gets the impression that languages are "born" with the curse of inflection, of which they gradually "free themselves" during their development. Which, of course, is nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.203.85 (talk) 15:17, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

By the process of grammaticalization, as described in Hopper-Traugott, Grammaticalization, 1993, Cambridge University Press, but poorly presented in the article. See the following section.

2001:171B:2274:7C21:90DB:71F3:AA4D:E9DC (talk) 08:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Confusing

According to the unidirectionality hypothesis, deflexion should be subject to a semantically driven one-way cline of grammaticality. However, exceptions to the gradual diachronic process have been observed where the deflexion process diminished or came to a halt, or where inflexional case marking was occasionally reinforced.

The unidirectionality hypothesis describes the development of inflections by the adherence of pronouns or prepositions -- a process called grammaticalization. On the other hand, deflexion is a loss of inflection, so it is more or less the opposite process.

So the above-quoted paragraph seems to be complete nonsense -- two unidirectional processes that are literally opposites are being treated as going in the same direction.

What is more likely is that sometimes one operates, and sometimes the other -- as we see in the cyclic example given in the article, namely the replacement of the Latin future by periphrasis and then by the French future.

This needs more research. Perhaps there are explanations in the book by Hopper-Traugott (see above).

Also, the Wiki-link to cline was completely misleading, because the "cline of grammaticality" in Hopper-Traugott and the "cline of instantiation" of Halliday are quite different -- all they have in common is that they are clines (a fancy word for continua) and that they are linguistic. So I removed it.

2001:171B:2274:7C21:90DB:71F3:AA4D:E9DC (talk) 08:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Development from fusional to agglutinative language

Persian is an example of a language which has lost most of its original fusional inflections, but has instead gained new agglutinative inflections. For example, in colloquial Persian you can say dustāmo, in which dust means friend, -ā- is the plural ending, -m- is the possessive ending for "my", and -o is the accusative marker (so the word means "my friends" in the accusative). Now, the article says something along the lines of "there are occasional examples where languages have regained inflections". It also says that through deflexion languages become "more analytic". In languages that are on their way to analytic languages both of these may be true, but that's not the path that all languages go, even if they do undergo deflexion. I think the article is much to focused on deflexion in Germanic and Romance languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.185.74 (talk) 23:53, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

There is also the process of grammaticalization, as described in Hopper-Traugott, cited in the article. It does exactly what you say, and it is the opposite of deflection. Clearly both operate at different times. Grammaticalization is presented very poorly (incoherently) in the article at hand.

I agree that the article has a blind spot -- it speaks as if deflection is the only possible direction, when actually that view is mostly inspired by West European languages, as you say. This can be balanced out by referring to the Wikipedia article Grammaticalization with appropriate emphasis. 2001:171B:2274:7C21:90DB:71F3:AA4D:E9DC (talk) 08:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Thou&You => You => You&Y'all,Ye,Youse =

Would dropping the singluar/informal Thou be considered a form of deflexion? Would dialectical attempts to complement the pronoun with a new second-person plural pronoun ("ye" "y'all" "youse") constitute reversed directionality? 46.235.94.203 (talk) 11:22, 7 May 2015 (UTC)