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Why did so many pre-Colombian languages develop such mind-bendingly complex verb morphologies?
This characteristic seems to cut across entire language families - it's not just Athabaskan languages like Navajo. I grew up in an area with a Salishan language, and even took some classes in it, but the verb structure was simply impenetrable.
The entire language ends up revolving around all these permutations of verbs. A sentence in English like "The man grabbed the tree branch with his right hand" becomes a single word that translates literally to something like "To previous-time-adult-tribe-member-manfully-right-handedly-turningly-ash-tree-part-grab." The whole word changes if the agent changes (gender, age, identity, etc.), if the type of tree changes, if the hand used to grab changes, etc.
Why did these languages evolve in this way?
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>>2937530
Because tribalism, as opposed to non-tribalism, is a mindset that favors a plurality without common ground. This is what defines a tribe. Tribalism is about increasing the differences in psycho-emotional ways, it is through this arbitrary differentiation that tribes are separated from each other, and through which the individual is mentally concerned with being exactly like the tribe wants him to be, because what seems like a small difference is hugely amplified through this system. As I talked the other day, it is interesting for the tribe to limit the individual's logic, particularly his ability for propositional calculus, by formally destroying an easy relation between a word and its logical negation. Further on, when you let people teach you that language form is more important than a new meaning, you won't be able to think of something simple unless someone give the words to you, probably over and over, and you won't dare to invent your own words for it, something you learn in the hard tribal life.
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>>2937587
This post has no actual substance of any kind in it.
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Man, I don't know, some people are just retarded.
If that's the only thing you got going for you, then you have to roll with it.
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Maybe that's why it took the Mississippians so long to develop a proto-State: they had to invent entirely new verbs to tell Running Beaver how to pick up a hammer.
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Watch this, OP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxARj07jFp0
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>>2937587
tell us more dr broscience
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