|
Good morning, listeners. Today, we are very happy to have Doctor Michael Williams to discuss evolution of language. Well, Michael. Thank you. Very pleased to meet you all here. Michael, there have been many theories about why languages change. Can you give us some examples, please? Of course. The first established theory of language change is one of decay and decadence proposed in the 18th century view. Their reasoning is that the old Indo-European languages like Sanskirit, Greek and Latin all have complex declension and conjugation schemes. Overtime the number of cases dropped, and the modern Indo-European languages have far fewer cases for declension and conjugation. It is said that people get increasingly careless about their speech, so they are "decadent" and have allowed the once complex language to decay into such a "simple" language. |
