<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 5.5.2448.0">
<TITLE>RE: [An-lang] Proto-Dialect chains</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Given that Waruno is correct when he says "I think that one problem with terminology is that terms tend to oversimplify that which they are meant to express, and I fully agree with Isidore Dyen with regard to the non-uniqueness of that which one likes to call 'language' and 'dialect'", I still think we NEED terms as simple labels for admittedly complex concepts.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>In this context, an earlier dialect chain which is the ancestor of a group of languages related as a linkage is probably different from an earlier homogeneous protolanguage only in the degree of internal variation. The component speech-communities of a proto-dialect-chain will, of course, have many commonalities - if they did not, we would be dealing with a multi-lingual and not a multi-dialectal situation. And this implies then that a proto-dialect-chain is "sort of" like a protolanguage, except that there is/was more internal variation.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>It seems to me too that (a) we can reconstruct these commonalities in just the same way, and with the same degree of resemblance to an earlier reality, as we reconstruct forms in a protolanguage, and (b) we can reconstruct at least some of the variation as well. After all, we already have forms in protolanguages reconstructed with internal variation: this is just a more complex situation.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>This said, we need a simple term to represent the complex concept of an earlier dialect-chain and a simple way to name such chains, in the same way as we use simple terms to cover other quite complex concepts. My original suggestion was to use proto-dialect-chain for the general concept, and small-p proto-ABC for an actual exponent of this, contrasting with capital-P Proto-ABC to represent an actual protolanguage.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>The greater difficulty, as Isidore and Andy remind us, is trying to establish a relative chronology of diversification.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>John Lynch</FONT>
</P>
<BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>