resemblances and Romance

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------


>Slavic is another family which was never discovered by a linguist.

>>Romance was simply "known" to be a family, given the historical knowledge that
>>all these languages were somehow "corrupt" forms of Latin--not merely in the
>>phonology but in the morphology.


Yes.
Rebecca Posner has given a great deal of thought to the question of
whether we would know that Romance languages were Romance if we didn't
have the historical evidence of their derivation from Latin; in
particular, whether the Romance creoles would be recognized as such
without the historical evidence of colonization by Romance-speakers.
I don't entirely understand her answer, though; maybe some other
Romanist on this list can?
                                        RW