Will English shift to be a tone language?

[Cheng-Zhong Su]

First,
Second,
Third,
Fourth,
Fifth,

First, I don’t quite understand your question. Any way, I just answer it according my understanding.
Suppose two person X and Y. X speaks a language with four letters as A,B,C,D while Y speaks a language with only two letters, as A and B. Now, they are required to express 20 different things by their own language. X can give the 16 things different name as A, B, C, D and their combinations as AA, AB, AC, AD, BA, BB, BC, BD, CA, CB, CC, CD, DA, DB, DC and DD 4+16=20
While the situation for Y is hard, he can name the 20 things as A, B and their combination as AA, AB, BB, BA, AAA, ABA, BBA, BAA, AAB, ABB, BBB, BAB. Now the combination of three letters is run out, we have to use the combination of four letters. That is AAAA, ABAA, BBAA, BAAA, AABA and ABBA. There could be some more combination of four letters cut we only need 6 for the former combination has offered 14 names.
Now could you understand when the two speakers express the 20 things from one to twenties one by one in their own languages, the Y should be slower than X?
For computer, it chose a system of two signals because it needs the two electronic signals stable, when operating. If we can change the system with four or sixteen signals, the computer’s running speed would be much faster. But this industry chooses a different way to accelerate its speed; that is not to change the number of basic signals but update the machine.
Human being could not replace their brain by a new brain in order to acerate the thinking speed. But human being can exploit their hearing sense to detect more information of our oral speaking, like what X done, human being can accelerate their thinking speed in a different way with computer. In other word, computer increases its speed by update the machine but human being accelerates the speed by detect more signals of speech.

Second, it could be a new language, but you don’t expect it will be changed overnight. What we can do is tell the people what is the trend of the evolution. Then, I believe that authors, writers or even the normal people will do the artificial evolution by themselves.

Third, yes evolution should not be controlled by any single person. But what we are talking about is the trend, what will happen and what the result is.

Fourth, I think what you mean is expression emotion in high and low tone. That is not what I mean to say. Beside, the tone language countries still expression by high and low tone. The target of tone is split a single sound into few sounds. Just think about when we sing a song, every syllable (or sound) can follow 8 to 16 different tones. You have so many choices, why mistake. In fact Zhao Yuan Ren describe the tone by the music tone as first tone[55], second tone, [35], third tone, [214] and fourth tone [51]. Where 1=do, 2=re, 3=mi, 4=fa, 5=sol etc. and in our every day speech 6=la and 7=ti are rarely used.

Fifth, When the Great Vowel Shift started, too is supposed double the time of to. But now, more and more linguists and people find they are roughly the same length. This happed in any tone language too. The intention started from ancient people wanted using a single sound ‘to’ to indicate two different things. How to distinguish them? The answer would be easy to understand that they pull one ‘to’ longer while push other ‘to’ shorter. But by practice of million’s people, they gradually find don’t worry the length only change tone can do the same job with same length, maybe it work better.

[konungursvia]

You are overlooking several things.

Firstly, people don't research modes of expression and then choose their mother tongue. They can't choose that any more than they can choose their mother. Therefore, the language learner is constrained to attempt to gain competence in the language as he perceives the community at large to use it. He or she never feels able to introduce independent new elements with any expectation of widespread uptake by others. We go through our whole lives feeling we still have much to learn and respect the structure, code, morphology and content of the language, and attempt to use it as others do, in a normative fashion. No person or small group of persons can actually negotiate and design a new language and agree to use it as a primary mode of speech. Most of the language acquisition cognitive processes are in fact autonomous and involuntary, and depend upon the observation and emulation of an existing social and linguistic group we interact with.

Secondly, tones themselves are known to predate language as we know it. Early hominids are believed to have vocalized phoric sememes using calls and tones distinguished one from the next. It is likely that tone languages preceded non tone languages; it is thus also likely that losing the tones was an innovation which found more success. We know from Rumjahn Hoosain (University of Hong Kong) that the tonal languages require energy-intensive activity in both hemispheres of the brain, both in reading/writing performance and in speaking/listening performance, and we know from psycholinguistic research that this type of dual hemisphere language performance across the corpus callosum is far more tiring for the language user than performance in non tonal languages, which employ almost exclusively the Broca centre in the left brain. My own anecdotal evidence supports this: my 18 year old Hong Kong students, all native Chinese users, preferred to use English to write and take notes, at all times, when given the choice. Therefore, it appears to be a move from a less energy efficient to a more energy efficient language form. We are no more likely to return to four-legged ambulation or walking on our hands upside-down, as they are harder to accomplish given our present anatomy and physiology.

I have to go, but I may chime in again later. By the way, I am learning Chinese and love it. English is just not going to go that way.

[Cheng-Zhong Su]

You are overlooking several things.

Firstly,

Secondly,

For firstly:
This happened in every language; it seemed irrelevant with my topic. We are talking about the efficiency of a language. Beside, even if you insist to speak your mother tongue, you could not deny any language is changing permanently. You could not stop the changing, what we can do is let the changing return us a more effective language.

For secondly:
You have listed many problems of tone language, some from the health some from the history. Can you tell me further detail about how many people have been damaged by speaking a tone language compare with their non tone language speaker?
Finally, there is a key issue can you answer me? That is can you tell me, why the English speaker can only master 30,000 words during life time, while a Chinese speaker can master more than one million words during short time?

[konungursvia]

For firstly:
This happened in every language; it seemed irrelevant with my topic. We are talking about the efficiency of a language. Beside, even if you insist to speak your mother tongue, you could not deny any language is changing permanently. You could not stop the changing, what we can do is let the changing return us a more effective language.

For secondly:
You have listed many problems of tone language, some from the health some from the history. Can you tell me further detail about how many people have been damaged by speaking a tone language compare with their non tone language speaker?
Finally, there is a key issue can you answer me? That is can you tell me, why the English speaker can only master 30,000 words during life time, while a Chinese speaker can master more than one million words during short time?

Your response is tosh. My first point was not that change cannot occur, only that we can't look at our language and say "hey, this would be more efficacious, let's all start doing this" on a conscious level reminiscent of Lamarckian evolution, on the one hand (false) and the Pléiade's "Défense et illustration de la langue françoyse" on the other (a failure).

On the second point, there is no health problem associated with the use of tones. We all get tired after a day of language use, at school for instance. If you read carefully, I never imply any health problems whatsoever. The point is that linguistic innovation, which as I stated is never adopted consciously, or through the efforts of one individual, cannot defy the laws of thermodynamics and move us toward phylogenetically less fitting solutions given the ontogenetic reality of our physiology, only towards more and more fitting ones.

Lastly, your numbers are rubbish. An English speaker typically learns and can use 10 000 words. An earlier poster's assertion that Shakespeare seems to have known 30 000 only shows how exceptional Shakespeare was.

Chinese speakers typically learn roughly the same number of words as English speakers, not one million. No person who ever lived has learnt that many words.

This is no longer an interesting academic or linguistic discussion. It has become a puerile argument in which inventing and bluffing have become ten-a-penny.

Honest advice here, without rancour: it is wise not to invent and publish theories in any area of human knowledge, until after having studied that area at a good university for several years. Proffering theories in areas outside our specialisation only makes us look uninformed and naive. Sorry, but I commend to you the virtutes of the area of psycholinguistics, about which you have yet to read any authoritative sources.

[Tdol]

Finally, there is a key issue can you answer me? That is can you tell me, why the English speaker can only master 30,000 words during life time, while a Chinese speaker can master more than one million words during short time?

This is not a key issue- it's just nonsense. I honestly can't be bothered to waste any more bandwidth on invented numbers and stuff like this:

Secondly, tones themselves are known to predate language as we know it. Early hominids are believed to have vocalized phoric sememes using calls and tones distinguished one from the next. It is likely that tone languages preceded non tone languages

[Emphasis mine]

A statement that claims to be factual, backed up by some conjecture, and larded up with some big words, before rounding it all off with some made-up figures. I think this theory may need a bit of pruning and honing before it gets into all the journals.