Why Do Languages Lose Grammatical Categories

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Why Do Languages Lose Grammatical Categories?

Latin and Romance Evidence

Matthew L. Juge

Abstract: Although sound change may contribute to the loss of grammatical categories, such as the Latin future and passive, comparative data show that phonological change alone cannot account for these morphological changes. Syncretism can arise from sound change, but patterns of sound change within Romance falsify the homonymy avoidance argument. Furthermore, Italian and Occitan provide models for analogical “solutions” to syncretism. Patterns of loss of grammatical categories must be contextualized cross-linguistically without preconceptions about which categories may be lost. Close analysis of phonologi-cal and morphological factors will facilitate the establishment of a typology of category loss.

Keywords: analogy, diachrony, grammar, morphology, phonology

istorical accounts of the loss of inflectional categories typically address the aftermath of the loss without adequately treating the reasons for the loss. For instance, Robertson (174–77) points out certain significant consequences of the loss of the particle wal in

the history of the Mayan verb but does not address the reasons for the loss of wal.In this article, I explore the loss of grammatical categories via two case studies on

the future and passive in Latin and Romance. Some analyses of the former focus on the later corresponding periphrases, rather than the synthetic forms themselves and the reason or reasons for their replacement. This is not, however, because of a lack of scholarship. Rather, some insightful work, such as that by Pulgram, has appar-ently been overlooked in subsequent research. As such, the attention paid to the loss of synthetic forms usually comes as a cursory suggestion of inevitable loss due to

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sound change and certain morphological factors. In this article, I examine and reject such claims, specifically Vincent’s argument that sound change and morphological inconsistency clinched the loss of the synthetic future. I argue that we have not yet determined why such grammatical categories are lost and that obtaining satisfactory answers depends on a more critical approach rooted in cross-linguistic comparison.

1 SOUND CHANGES DESTROY CASE, REDUCE GENDERS IN ROMANCE NOMINALS

Regular sound change can, of course, affect the number of distinctions within a grammatical system, as shown, for example, by the loss of the case system in nouns and adjectives in most Romance languages. The expected outcomes of cer-tain well-known sound changes—primarily vocalic mergers and consonant loss (table 1)—show how syncretism arose in nouns, contributing to the loss of case and the neuter gender in most Romance languages (table 2). However, the Latin verb offered even more inflectional categories than the nominal system and has proven more resistant—but not immune—to loss of morphological categories. I now turn to some claims about such losses in the verb system, starting with the role of sound change.

2 THE LATIN FUTURE, SOUND CHANGE, AND HOMONYMY AVOIDANCE

Among categories lost in the Romance languages, the future has probably gotten the most attention. The emphasis has typically fallen squarely on sound change.

TABLE 1. Selected Sound Changes Affecting the Latin Nominal System

Key sound changes Additional sound changes

a* > a o* > o m > Ø / __# u > o i* > i w > b t* > t n* > *

TABLE 2. Latin-Spanish Correspondences in the Nominal System

Category ‘drop (of water, etc.)’ ‘year’ ‘wine’

Latin Spanish Latin Spanish Latin Spanish

Nominative singular gutta gota annus años vınum binoAccusative singular guttam gota annum año vınum binoAblative singular gutta gota anno año vıno binoAccusative plural guttas gotas annos años vına bina

Note. Forms in shaded cells did not survive into modern Spanish in their expected forms.

70 ROMANCE QUARTERLY

2.1 The Latin Future “Threatened” by Sound Changes and Morphological Factors

The Latin synthetic future did not survive into modern Romance.1 Lathrop calls the Latin future “a tense with unstable phonetic characteristics” (63). Vin-cent cites sound change as one of two “deciding factors” in the loss of the future and inconsistency across verb classes as the other.

Vincent argues that “the inconsistent nature of the inflectional pattern across the conjugations”—that is, amābō ‘I will love’ versus dīcam ‘I will say’— contributed to the loss of the synthetic future (48). Such inconsistency, however, is “tolerated” elsewhere in Romance verbs, as in the imperfect indicative (table 3). In regular verbs, Iberian Romance has two types: root + theme vowel + ending, root + ending; Italian has one—root + theme vowel + ending—that creates the appearance of three types; and French has root + ending for all verb classes.

In citing his other factor, “[h]omonymic clashes induced by sound changes—amavi / amavit / amabit all become amavi” (48), Vincent ignores half the paradigm and implies that homophony of this type is fatal. When such homophony does develop, it is often ‘tolerated’ indefinitely. Syncretism is widespread not only in the Romance verb (e.g., 1SG and 3SG forms are identical in most Romance para-digms; cf. table 4) but also across the world’s languages (cf. Baerman, Brown, and Corbett). As such, syncretism induced by sound change cannot, on its own, be considered an adequate explanation for such paradigm loss.

Nonetheless, some have treated such syncretism as a “problem.” In the Old Catalan preterit, for example, a small group of verbs had identical 1SG/3SG forms (e.g., dix ‘said’; cf. Portuguese disse in table 4) and first conjugation verbs had a present~preterit syncretism in the 1PL and 2PL of the indicative (e.g., cantam

TABLE 3. Conjugational Variation in the Romance Imperfect Indicative

English Spanish Portuguese Catalan Italian French

‘love’ amaba amava amava amava aimait‘run’ corría corria corria correva courait‘sleep’ dormía dormia dormia dormiva dormait

TABLE 4. 1SG/3SG Syncretism Found in Nonfuture TAMCATs

Category Language Example Gloss

Imperfect indicative Catalan amava I loved/(s)he lovedImperfect subjunctive Catalan amés I loved/(s)he lovedPreterit (indicative) Portuguese disse I said/(s)he said

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‘we sing’~‘we sang’; cf. Spanish cantamos). In traits like this, Pérez Saldanya sees motivation for the development and spread of the so-called GO-periphrasis (vam cantar ‘we sang’; I have argued against this analysis elsewhere [see “Morphologi-cal,” “Narrative”]). However, the periphrastic preterit has not completely ousted the synthetic preterit. Corresponding forms in Occitan show not one but two patterns of analogical restructuring (table 5). Such processes need not be con-strued as teleological, though (cf. Juge, “Metaphor”).

Four-part or proportional analogy can also reduce syncretism, as in the Italian imperfect indicative, where both the present and future indicative provide a basis for the form amavo ‘I loved’. Application of four-part analogy to the forms ama:amo::amava:X yields X = amavo (table 6). So it is reasonable to consider the pos-sibility that the synthetic future could have survived into modern Romance with analogical changes (table 8).

Similarly, Penny cites two syncretisms: future indicative~present subjunctive in the 1SG of the third and fourth conjugations (e.g., dīcam ‘I will say’~‘I say [subj.]’)

TABLE 5. Leveling in the Preterit in Catalan and Occitan

Catalan Occitan

Old Modern Old Modern

Clermont- Standard Ferrand

1SG canté cantí cantéi cantèri cantéte2SG cantast cantares cantést cantères cantétes3SG cantà cantà cantét cantèt canté1PL cantam cantàrem cantém cantèrem cantétem2PL cantats cantàreu cantétz cantèretz cantétez3PL cantaren cantaren cantéren cantèron cantéton

Note. Bolded forms reflect substantial intraparadigmatic influence (= leveling). Italicized forms are the base forms for leveling (standard: cantéren, Clermont-Ferrand: cantét).

TABLE 6. Analogical Reduction of Syncretism in the Italian Imperfect Indicative

Italian amare ‘to love’

Present Indicative Imperfect Indicative

3SG

ama : 1SG

amo :: 3SG

amava : 1SG

X X = amavo


and present~future in “highly frequent third-person-singular forms” of the third conjugation resulting from the merger of long and short /e/ and short /i/ in final syllables (dīcet ‘(s)he will say’ and dīcit ‘(s)he says’ > dice) (206). Analogical changes like those shown in table 7 would have eliminated such overlaps.

Analogical extension of patterns in the first conjugation to the second, third, and fourth conjugations could have turned the Latin synthetic future into a “viable” TAMCAT (Tense-Aspect-Mood CATegory) in the Romance languages. Before addressing additional similar puzzles in the verb system, I turn to the nominal system for further comparison.

2.2 The Latin Genitive Should—and Does—Survive

Aside from Romanian, the modern Romance languages have retained case only in pronouns, typically with reflexes of the Latin nominative, dative, and accusative. Attested sound changes, though, seem to favor the survival of the genitive as well (table 8). Apparently, however, only one genitive form remains

TABLE 7. Possible Spanish Reflexes of the Latin Future Active

‘love’ ‘run’

Latin Spanish Latin Spanish

Expected With analogy Expected With analogy

INF amare amar amar currere correr correr1SG amabo amabo amabo curram corra correbo2SG amabis amabes amabes curres corres correbes3SG amabit amabe amabe curret corre correbe1PL amabimus amábemos amábemos curremus corremos corrébemos2PL amabitis amabes amabeis curretis corréis correbeis3PL amabunt amabon amabon current corren correbon

Note. Bolded forms would have shown syncretism. Italicized forms show analogy.

TABLE 8. Expected Spanish Reflexes of Latin Genitive Nouns

Category ‘drop (of water, etc.)’ ‘year’ ‘wine’

Latin Spanish Latin Spanish Latin Spanish

Genitive singular guttae gote annı añe vını bineGenitive plural guttarum gotaro annorum añoro vınorum binoro

Note. Shaded cells contain expected forms that did not survive into modern Spanish.

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robust, the plural form of the demonstrative ille ‘that’ (table 9, where bolded forms come from illōrum).

The Catalan reflex of illōrum (no longer common in the spoken language), with singular llur and plural llurs, is more of a possessive adjective than a geni-tive pronoun. This is true in French as well, but the extension of leur to oblique functions indicates pronominal status. Romanian lor and Italian loro, meanwhile, are even more fully pronominal. Italian shows the most extension, since loro has also spread into the subject function.

This pattern is typical of the retention of more distinctions in limited areas found in such instances as person/number marking in the English verb to be or case distinc-tions in continental Scandinavian personal pronouns vis-à-vis nouns. Such retention of isolated forms rather than an entire grammatical category is loosely reminiscent of other instances, such as the survival in Russian of the synthetic future only in the verb byt’ ‘to be’ (búdu, búdesh’, etc.—unique among nonperfective verbs). The Russian case differs significantly, though, in two respects. First, the retained forms serve to mark the relevant feature in a periphrasis. Second, perfective verbs still mark the future synthetically. In contrast, the reflexes of illōrum are essentially isolated elements. This result shows yet another possible outcome of morphological loss.

3 ADDITIONAL PUZZLING LOSSES IN THE VERB SYSTEM

The history of the Romance verb includes other losses still lacking satisfac-tory explanations, including the imperfect and future subjunctive and, espe-cially, the passive.

3.1 The Disappearance of the Latin Synthetic Passive

The loss of the Latin synthetic passive deepens the puzzle, the reasons for its loss rarely if ever receiving attention. Arguments like those mentioned above cannot account for such a loss—regular sound changes would have produced distinctive passive forms (table 10). One factor that may have contributed to this loss is the hybrid nature already found in Classical Latin, where the perfect TAMCATS were periphrastic (e.g., dictum est ‘it has been said’).

TABLE 9. Partial Survival of the Genitive Plural in Pronouns

Third Person Masculine Pronoun

Category Latin French Romanian Italian Catalan

Nominative singular ille il el lui ellDative singular illı lui lui gli liAccusative singular illum le el lo el/l’/-lo/’lNominative plural illı ils ei loro ellsDative plural illıs leur lor loro li/els/-los/’lsGenitive plural illorum leur/leurs lor loro llur/llurs


3.2 The Latin Imperfect Subjunctive, Perfect Subjunctive, and Future Perfect

Perhaps it is a truism of historical linguistics that a development in one lan-guage or dialect may not occur when the same circumstances appear to hold in other languages or dialects. The widespread but not universal loss of the Latin imperfect subjunctive, perfect subjunctive, and future perfect illustrates this quite well. The imperfect subjunctive was lost in most Romance languages, possibly due, in part, to its close resemblance to the future perfect (indicative) and the perfect subjunctive.2 Nonetheless, it survives in Portuguese and Sardinian, where it continues as the personal infinitive3 and the imperfect subjunctive, respectively (table 11).

Not only were the forms of the imperfect subjunctive similar to those of the future perfect (indicative) and the perfect subjunctive (after the contraction found in perfect forms—e.g., 2s imperfect subjunctive amārēs > amares ‘you love’ and future perfect indicative/perfect subjunctive amāveris > amares ‘you [will] have loved’), but these latter two were also very similar to each other. Yet, not only does the imperfect subjunctive survive into Portuguese as the personal infinitive, but also the merged TAMCATS of the perfect subjunctive and the future perfect indicative survive in Portuguese (and vestigially in Spanish) as well in the form of the future subjunctive (identical to the personal infinitive for many verbs, but not those with “strong” perfect stems; e.g., ser ‘to be’ has 2s personal infinitive seres, clearly distinct from 2s future subjunctive fores). The loss of these TAMCATs cannot be regarded simplistically as inevitable.

4 A BROADER PERSPECTIVE

My exploration of these cases is designed not only to raise certain issues in Romance but also to facilitate comparison with data in other families to seek gen-eral principles of morphological change or, more specifically, morphological loss.

4.1 What Is Category Loss?

So far I have addressed grammatical category loss without specifying exactly what I mean by the term. The frame of reference, here, is the morphosyntactic system—that is, the set of forms and patterns that encode certain meanings. That is, does the language mark—synthetically or periphrastically—a given distinction?

TABLE 10. Expected Spanish Reflexes of Latin Present Indicative Passive

Latin first conjugation Spanish

1SG amor 1PL amamur 1SG ámor 1PL amámor2SG amaris 2PL amaminı 2SG amares 2PL amambre3SG amatur 3PL amantur 3SG amádor 3PL amántor

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For example, although an English speaker can specify whether she includes the addressee, English itself certainly does not have a grammatical category of inclusive/exclusive first person marking, as do many languages of North America, such as Mohawk and Siuslaw (cf. Mithun 70–71), where such information is obligatorily encoded. Thus, a language may lose its future verbs while of course continuing to offer ways of discussing the future (with temporal adverbs, for instance).

4.2 What Categories Can Be Lost? Almost Any of Them

Two main types of evidence indicate the dispensability of inflectional cat-egories. Strong evidence that a given category can be lost comes from languages lacking it. Languages with very little inflectional morphology—such as Yoruba, Vietnamese, and Mandarin Chinese—show that many categories, including such seemingly basic ones as number and tense, are, in some sense, superfluous. How-ever, this only shows that the category in question is not indispensible, not that it can be lost, as a given language may not have ever had that category.

Stronger evidence, then, comes from cases in which we have attested loss of a category (or reliable evidence of loss based on comparative data). For example, in Norwegian, the older 2S/3S suffix -r has spread to the other persons in the present, eliminating person/number distinctions. In principle it might be worthwhile to subdivide such cases into those in which the category in question is not replaced by other grammaticalized means of expression and those in which it is. At this stage, though, it is not clear what insight such a typology would provide.

In the case of the Latin future, both results occur. Most Romance varieties have newer future constructions that are or were periphrastic, whereas in some southern Italian dialects the future is normally expressed with present forms.

4.3 What Causes the Loss of Grammatical Categories?

Sound change, then, may contribute to the loss of grammatical categories; but, contrary to what is sometimes claimed or implied, it is not always sufficient to cause such loss. Pulgram sums the issue up this way: “What came first—the phonological decay of endings or the extension of prepositional phrases and hardening of word-order—is a chicken-and-egg question. No doubt all these events worked together and reinforced one another over time” (230). Similarly, morphological patterns may contribute to the loss of grammatical categories but appear to have relatively little true explanatory power. In the absence of satisfac-tory solutions, we must seek to establish how much insight previously identified factors provide and explore other possible factors.

4.3.1 Teleology—Do “Out of Balance” Morphological Systems Need to Be “Fixed”? No

One approach to the loss of grammatical categories depends on the notion that they sometimes reach a level of imbalance that essentially forces the language to repair itself. For example, as I mentioned in section 2.1, Pérez Saldanya argues that “problems” in the simple preterit in Catalan contributed to its loss in favor

WINTER 2009, VOL. 56, NO. 1 77

of the periphrastic preterit (vam cantar ‘we sang’). I have rejected such arguments elsewhere (“Morphological,” “Metaphor”).

4.3.2 Sociogeographic Factors May Provide Some CluesSeemingly intractable cases often provoke attempts at explanation based on

claims of substratum influence, about which Hock shows great skepticism: “[M]any (perhaps most) of the common alleged prehistoric instances of ‘sub-stratal’ changes are quite dubious” (485).

4.3.2.1 Extrinsic factors do not account for distinctive traits. Among the Romance languages, Spanish has received special attention. López García, for instance, claims that Castilian grammar shows fourteen significant points of influence from Basque. Trask and Wright address those points and reject all of them. Wright argues separately that the data require no reference to outside factors: “the early Medieval Romance variation itself was the result of natural intralinguistic processes [. . .] and hardly ever attributable to extrinsic causes even in minor details” (293). In addressing such claims, Wright emphasizes the need to apply greater knowledge of the languages cited as putative sources of this type of influence rather than necessitating clarification by other scholars, such as “poor Basque specialists who have more to do with their time than defend their subject from such ill-informed fantasies” (280).

More useful, in Wright’s view, is what Trudgill calls interdialect, the speech that results when speakers of multiple dialects come together and produce a variety showing certain simplifications and preference for unmarked variants. Wright states that interdialect “may well explain why Romance in general is simpler than Latin” (Dialects 285). It seems, however, that in the case of the morphological issues under consideration here the timing of interactions among differing Latin and Romance speakers is quite likely too late to explain the losses.

4.3.2.2 Degree of contact and “natural” versus “non-natural” changes. Trudgill combines sociolinguistic and sociogeographic factors to explain morphological differences between Faroese and the continental Scandinavian languages, which are less conservative inflectionally (table 12). He divides changes into “natural” (“liable to occur in all linguistic systems, at all times, without external stimulus, because of the inherent nature of linguistic systems themselves”) and “non-natural” (“mainly [. . .] the result of language contact [. . .] not due to the inherent nature of language systems, but to processes that take place in particular sociolinguistic

TABLE 12. Inflectional Conservatism in Faroese Versus Continental Scandinavian

Cases

Language Nouns Pronouns per gender verb forms

Faroese 3 3 3 11Norwegian — 2 1 5

Noun declensions Inflected


situations,” On Dialect 102). His proposal also fits with the tendency for rural varieties to be more conservative than urban ones.

McMahon objects to Trudgill’s analysis, especially his terminology. She suggests, instead, “internal” versus “external” change since “‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ are arguably just too close to ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ for comfort” (267). Because this type of analysis is sociolinguistic in nature, it requires that we ask whether it fits the relevant sociolinguistic situation of the time and place. Because the synthetic future and passive both vanished from all Romance varieties, sociogeo-graphic variation does not help to explain these developments.

4.3.3 Communicative ConsiderationsPulgram connects “the replacement of synthetic by analytic forms, often issuing

from a redundant construction” to “a desire to achieve certainty of communication through prolixity rather than brevity” (202). Although this might initially seem like a teleological analysis, it need not be. Speakers may indeed desire to express them-selves clearly without ever considering, even subconsciously, how their usage might contribute to eventual changes in the overall system. This proposal merits further exploration with detailed cross-linguistic analyses of language in context.

CONCLUSIONS

The loss of grammatical categories, as addressed here primarily with respect to the synthetic future and passive, reveals that some scholars’ emphasis on the role of sound change and consequent syncretism cannot fully explain such losses, even when supplemented by arguments based on morphological factors. Although sociolinguistic and sociogeographic models appear promising, these particular cases do not seem amenable to such approaches, partly because of chronological considerations. Communicative considerations, however, may indeed play a significant role in such changes.

Unsurprisingly, answering how is easier than answering why. However, I argue that exploring, at least briefly, seemingly unanswerable questions provides a clearer perspective on what kinds of issues we can profitably address. In revisit-ing seemingly foregone conclusions about the development of well-known forms from Latin to Romance, we may choose to reevaluate the research questions we pose. We also sometimes find that more recent scholarship has missed previous work that addresses the issues that concern us.

Surveys like that of Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca on grammaticalization patterns provide useful overviews. However, I suggest that case studies with narrower scope and more-detailed analysis complement cross-linguistic comparison, which in turn enriches the investigation of more “local” problems. In some cases like those explored here, certain difficulties arise from not extrapolating ideas and claims to their logical conclusions. Finally, I contend that identifying and rejecting not only incorrect answers but also non-answers helps us resolve linguistic puzzles.

Texas State University–San Marcos

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NOTES

I appreciate the invaluable input I received on this article from Joel Rini, who organized Rogerfest, the 2008 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference sessions in Roger Wright’s honor. I also benefited from feedback from the other panelists as well as Alan King, Sharla Nichols, and William F. Weigel. Any errors are my responsibility. 1. The widespread notion that the Spanish second person singular present indicative of

ser ‘to be,’ eres, comes from the Latin future form eris presents a puzzle in both semantics and chronology. Rini surveys a range of proposals and offers a new explanation, arguing that the form is the result of back-formation from future subjunctive fueres. His analysis emphasizes the relationship between what in Latin were corresponding elements of the infectum and perfectum subsystems and the use of such forms in subordinate clauses. 2. The imperfect subjunctive paradigms in the modern languages come from Latin

pluperfect forms. 3. There is some debate about the origins of the Portuguese personal infinitive. See

Scida for additional information.

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cal Linguistics 2005. Ed. Joseph C. Salmons and Shannon Dubenion-Smith. Amster-dam: John Benjamins, 2007. 33–48.

———. “Morphological Factors in the Grammaticalization of the Catalan ‘Go’ Past.” Diachronica 23.2 (2006): 313–39.

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Pérez Saldanya, Manuel. “Gramaticalització i reanàlisi: el cas del perfet perifràstic en català.” Actes del desè col.loqui internacional de llengua i literatura catalanes. Ed. A. Schönberger and Tilbert Dídac Stegmann. Vol. 3. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1996. 71–107.

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Scida, Emily. The Inflected Infinitive in the Romance Languages. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Trask, R. L., and Roger Wright. “El ‘vascorrománico’.” Verba: Anuario galego de filoloxía 15 (1988): 361–73.

Trudgill, Peter. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwells, 1986.———. On Dialect. New York: New York UP, 1983.Vincent, Nigel. “Latin.” The Romance Languages. Ed. Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent.

New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 26–78.Wright, Roger. “Latin in Spain: Early Ibero-Romance.” The Origins and Development of

Emigrant Languages. Ed. Hans F. Nielsen and Lene Schøsler. Odense: U of Odense P, 1996. 277–98.

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Why Do Languages Lose Grammatical Categories