Modern English is the endpoint of this trend: the complex case system of Old English has almost entirely disappeared apart from vestiges retained in the pronouns.
So, noun endings erode, and word order becomes increasingly conventionalized. Thus, historically, languages tend to shift from relying on case endings to relying on word order, but not the other way around. Modern English is the endpoint of this trend: the complex case system of Old English has almost entirely disappeared apart from vestiges retained in the pronouns.
Charades may seem a credible metaphor for thinking about the origins of nouns and verbs, which pick out objects and actions—but what about grammar?
But where do case markings on nouns and markings for tense on verbs come from in the first place? How can a process of charades—focused almost entirely on immediate, visible, concrete objects and actions—possibly end up conveying abstract ideas like subject, direct object, or indirect object (in Sunita gave the book to Maya, these would be Sunita, the book and Maya, respectively)? And how can successive verbal charades create the plethora of verb endings for different subjects ( I, you, he/she, we, etc.) and tenses? For that matter, where do all the short “grammatical” words ( of, to, and, on, by) that glue language together come from? Charades may seem a credible metaphor for thinking about the origins of nouns and verbs, which pick out objects and actions—but what about grammar?