3 ms·

Interesting, this is the first I heard of this. Do you have a source that you could point to that lays out the argument (for English specifically)?

posterboy 6y ago
There's a common wisdom iI learned from english.stackexchange comments that English is one of the easiest languages to learn, but one of the toughest to master. Which strikes a fair ballance. It relates for example to the relatively strict word order. There are a number of (well sourced) posts on linguistics.stackexchange dealing with a different question, if language complexity varies, i.e. if a language could be simpler per se, which is chiefly denied. Any simplification in one part of the grammar will lead to an increase of complexity in another part. In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. There is just no way to measure this precisely, since it is of course subjective.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. No, this is an active theory in linguistics.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
I found several papers discussing the theory, which seem to mostly trace back through https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 . Laying out the argument for English specifically is of a little less interest, but you can find remarks like this: > The degree and specificity of morphological encoding can reach astounding levels. For example, Karok—a language of N.W. California—has morphological suffixes for forms of containment pa:θ-kirih ‘‘throw into fire’’, pa:θ-kurih ‘‘throw into water’’, pa:θ-ruprih ‘‘throw in through a solid’’ (the affixes are unrelated to the lexemes for water, fire, etc.) > Clearly, such elaboration does not arise from communicative necessity. Researchers have long been puzzled by the reasons why some languages abound in such overspecification, while others (sometimes closely related ones) eschew it. > For example, in comparing English and German we find that where the surface structures of English and German contrast, English is less specified, leaving more to context, thus, ‘‘...German speakers are forced to make certain semantic distinctions which can regularly be left unspecified in English’’, p. 28). For example, German obligatorily specifies the direction of motion in the place adverbs here/there/where. Compare: hier/her; dort/hin; wo/wohin. English can specify direction using to and from (‘‘where to’’ versus ‘‘where from’’), but such specification is optional and is generally omitted (Note that "where to" and "where from" were expressed in older varieties of English as the words whither and whence.) That paper does cite What Happened to English? ( https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour... ), which is more directly on the topic of "English is simpler than any other Germanic language".

posterboy 6y ago

There's a common wisdom iI learned from english.stackexchange comments that English is one of the easiest languages to learn, but one of the toughest to master. Which strikes a fair ballance. It relates for example to the relatively strict word order. There are a number of (well sourced) posts on linguistics.stackexchange dealing with a different question, if language complexity varies, i.e. if a language could be simpler per se, which is chiefly denied. Any simplification in one part of the grammar will lead to an increase of complexity in another part. In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. There is just no way to measure this precisely, since it is of course subjective.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> In other words, I believe the grandparent comment cited common wisdom with a bit of folk believe. No, this is an active theory in linguistics.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

I found several papers discussing the theory, which seem to mostly trace back through https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 https://sci-hub.se/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 . Laying out the argument for English specifically is of a little less interest, but you can find remarks like this: > The degree and specificity of morphological encoding can reach astounding levels. For example, Karok—a language of N.W. California—has morphological suffixes for forms of containment pa:θ-kirih ‘‘throw into fire’’, pa:θ-kurih ‘‘throw into water’’, pa:θ-ruprih ‘‘throw in through a solid’’ (the affixes are unrelated to the lexemes for water, fire, etc.) > Clearly, such elaboration does not arise from communicative necessity. Researchers have long been puzzled by the reasons why some languages abound in such overspecification, while others (sometimes closely related ones) eschew it. > For example, in comparing English and German we find that where the surface structures of English and German contrast, English is less specified, leaving more to context, thus, ‘‘...German speakers are forced to make certain semantic distinctions which can regularly be left unspecified in English’’, p. 28). For example, German obligatorily specifies the direction of motion in the place adverbs here/there/where. Compare: hier/her; dort/hin; wo/wohin. English can specify direction using to and from (‘‘where to’’ versus ‘‘where from’’), but such specification is optional and is generally omitted (Note that "where to" and "where from" were expressed in older varieties of English as the words whither and whence.) That paper does cite What Happened to English? ( https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour... ), which is more directly on the topic of "English is simpler than any other Germanic language".