LINGUIST List 13.2151

Thu Aug 22 2002

Qs: Open Source Programs, Syntax Stability

Editor for this issue: Renee Galvis <reneelinguistlist.org>



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Directory

  • Doug Whalen, Query: Open-source Language Teaching Code
  • Frederick Newmeyer, Stability of syntax over time

    Message 1: Query: Open-source Language Teaching Code

     Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 09:49:10 -0400
    From: Doug Whalen <whalenalvin.haskins.yale.edu>
    Subject: Query: Open-source Language Teaching Code


    Does anyone know of any open-source programs for teaching a language? Ideally, this would be something modularized so that new languages could be introduced into the system.

    Thanks, Doug Whalen DhW (whalenhaskins.yale.edu) - Doug Whalen (whalenhaskins.yale.edu) Haskins Laboratories 270 Crown St. New Haven, CT 06511 203-865-6163, ext. 234 FAX: 203-865-8963 http://www.haskins.yale.edu/

    Message 2: Stability of syntax over time

     Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 18:15:14 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Frederick Newmeyer <fjnu.washington.edu>
    Subject: Stability of syntax over time


    I am very curious to know if any work has been done estimating how stable syntactic systems tend to be over time. That is, on how different the syntax of a language is likely to be from generation to generation in the absence of a significant amount of language contact.

    I am aware of the difficulties inherent in probing this question. For example, what does one compare? Percentage of shared constructions? Parameter settings? Constraint orderings? Likewise, it is often not easy to separate syntactic change from morphological and lexical change.

    My impression, based on the few European languages whose history I am familiar with, is that syntax changes pretty slowly. For example, I suspect that we (native Modern English speakers) could manage to converse pretty well with a speaker of Elizabethan English (400+ years ago) and the difficulties would be mostly lexical and (often very low level) phonological. English phonology changed massively between Middle and Early Modern English, but what about syntax? There were changes, but not nearly so profound, I think.

    Of course we have no concrete records, by definition, of the syntactic histories of unwritten (or recently written) languages. But offhand I have no reason to think that syntactic change is necessarily speedier in such languages.

    Anyway, if anybody has thoughts on this question, I would be very pleased to hear them.

    Fritz Newmeyer fjnu.washington.edu