Re: Random Question on Indo-European Languages

Jack Campin - bogus address pravi:
In the IE group there is a clear tendency for the languages to change
from being synthetic to analitic. Is the same process going on in other language groups?

Turkish has acquired a new tense ending in recent centuries (the
"-iyor" present) and shows no sign of losing any of its older
inflectional apparatus. It's acquired an analytic way of doing
relative clauses from Persian (the "ki" particle), but that sits
alongside the traditional gerundives with no sign that it's ever
going to replace them.

Ok, thanks. I thought that this might be some universal process occuring in all languages. If that is not so, then the question still remains why are IE languages becoming more synthetic over time.
.

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