The UPenn IE Tree (a test)

[Rick Mc Callister]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

[snip]

>No.  An ancestral language cannot co-exist with its own descendant.>>

>Now I am not saying I have a problem with this.  I'm sure there are good
>methodological reason for the rule that "an ancestral language cannot
>co-exist with its own descendant."  (But if it is only terminological, I
>might ask why it is necessary.)

[snip]

	Actually it can.
	Both Spanish and its daughter language Ladino are alive, although
Ladino, the daughter language is endangered.
	English and the Papuan languages [etc.] that spawned Tok Pisin are
all alive.
	But the Spanish that gave rise to Ladino has probably changed as
much as  [if not more than] Ladino has. Spanish and Ladino are also
mutually comprehensible, although you occasionally have to ask what a word
means.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701

[ Moderator's comment:
  15th century Spanish is no more "alive" than 15th century English, so modern
  Ladino and other modern Spanish dialects are not a case of a contemporaneous
  parent & descendant language pair, but of dialects that are called different
  languages for sociopolitical reasons.  Certainly in the sense that Mr. Long
  intends, no language ever lives alongside its parent for more than a single
  generation (if that long).
  --rma ]