All Questions
Tagged with grammaticalisation linguistic-typology
3 questions
5
votes
1
answer
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Do conjunctions like "and" ever become grammaticalized into plural morphemes?
If so, what are some examples of this having occurred?
For instance, take a scenario where "X-and-X" is a common expression of plurality, as in English emphatic quantitative expressions like ...
- 53
8
votes
2
answers
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What does Eastern Aramaic have to say about "(definite) articles are acquired, not lost"?
The current answers on Definite/indefinite articles vs. inflections agree that (definite) articles are acquired by languages, not lost.
I'm wondering what Eastern Aramaic has to say about this. ...
- 4,840
15
votes
2
answers
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Are any of the isolating languages of East Asia showing signs of gaining inflections?
It's generally accepted that languages go through a cycle of changes to their morphological type.
English is losing its inflectional endings and becoming more isolating/analytic.
But what about the ...
- 14.8k