The Neolithic Hypothesis (Standardization)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<<It is quite clear that Latin remained a spoken language well into second
millenium

In a message dated 3/26/99 2:42:16 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<-- on the contrary.  Nobody actually spoke it as a first language; it had
become a "learned" tongue, used only for scholarly and religious purposes.
Medieval churchmen and scholars used Latin as a written language, but spoke
early versions of French, German, Italian, and so forth.>>

But don't you see where this approach gets you?

What evidence is there that this view of Medieval Latin is any different from
the texts we have in Hittite, Mycenaean, Sanskrit, Homeric Greek, etc.?  We
know that "Attic" Greek was not the majority language of either Greece or
perhaps even that small part of Greece.  You mention early runes as proof of
the unity of Germanic, but why wouldn't those runes be written in some ancient
and specialized runic liturgical language just like Latin? - runes were not
used for real text writing probably for that very reason.

First of all, Latin stayed a spoken as well as written language for well over
a thousand years.  It was elitist, but it was SPOKEN and not just by churchman
and scholars.   CC Love in the intro to "Five Sixteeth Century Latin Plays"
writes "Latin, of course, was necessary for the educated, that is, the
nobility and the upper classes, because it had become the language of
diplomacy, of the law, medicine and commerce, as well as continuing to be the
language of the church, and it seemed that Latin would probably become the
standard European language.
...the learning of Latin was not left to chance. Most of the (English) schools
included in their statutes that boys must speak Latin to each other "as
well in the school as coming to and from it" (Oundle 1556), and
Rivington (1566) decreed "in the School they that can must speak nothing
but Latin." In most schools the boys were birched if they were caught
speaking English. Similar rules were enforced on the Continent, where it
is reported that Montaigne at the age of six spoke Latin at his school
in Bordeaux and in his teens acted in the Latin play Baptistes,..."  Toynbee;
"Sir Philip Sidney at Shrewsbury School spoke Latin and regularly, as part of
his school work, acted with his classmates in parts of plays every week..."
And so forth.  Long before that it had been established that one could not
even speak at many western European royal and baronical courts without
speaking Latin or using a translator that did.  The canonical courts and
courts of equity - often the most powerful across Europe during most of the
middle Ages - required that all testimony be taken in Latin.  The Teutonic
Knights only spoke Latin at the their ccouncils and the Hanseatic League would
distinguish and favor merchants at foreign ports according to whether they
spoke Latin or not. The major trials and treaties of the whole period were all
heard or negotiated in spoken Latin.  Martin Irvine wrote: "Latin was the
language of power and prestige, of law and learning, of religion and official
culture."  S. Coates in an NYT on modern Latin as a language of international
science wrote:  " in the Middle Ages..., Latin thrived in Europe as a lingua
franca for international scholarship, diplomacy and commerce."

The "vernaculars" (the "state languages" and other dominant local dialects)
fought Latin through the likes of Chaucer and Dante and Luther throughout this
time and eventually prevailed.  But what prevailed was not the thousand and
one dialects that would have been forever turning up on the level of the
villiages or towns or backstreets of the city.  EB White wrote:  "Long after
Charlemagne, scholars,
clerics, merchants, lawyers and diplomats throughout Europe continued to write
and converse fluently in Latin, many of them perhaps exclusively or
nearly so. That this can be said only of a cultural elite is true
enough. But the same view can be taken of the rise of any official
modern vernacular, such as Italian, which in its 'official' form
was spoken by only a tiny fraction of the total population of
Italy until late in the last century."

The fact that Latin was a second language during this time really means
nothing in the context of the early data that is used to reconstruct PIE.
Precisely because that written data could very well also reflect the elite
language of the scribes or the elite.  In fact, that would make the most
sense, because the regular dialects mutated too fast from generation to
generation and so were therefore too unreliable for writing records or other
important information.

That is why Latin persisted for so long with so little change.  It was meant
to be conservative.  And that is why 80% of all the records we have from
Northern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages are written in Latin.

Writing aids this process but is not necessary to it.  Oral tradition will
perserve a language along with the information that is being preserved.  We
call such languages archaic or administrative or poetic without recognizing
that it was meant to be independent of the vagaries of local dialects and
changes they would go through.  And it is the basis of what we really know
about early IE.

<<Latin had a standard form, but nevertheless went right on splintering into
regional dialects, and eventually into separate languages.>>

Nyet. Latin did both.  It stayed a standard languages while it also splintered
into other dialects and languages.

<<-- you're confusing the standardization of poetic or administrative
languages
with effects on what people actually speak. Incidentally, Sanskrit wasn't
written down until over a millenium after the composition of the Rig-Veda; it
was preserved orally.>>

You are confusing the evidence.  All we have until relatively recent times are
the poetic and administrative and other standardizing languages.  We have no
idea how Hittite mothers spoke.  Sanskrit is a perfect example.  One
reconstructs PIE  from standardized languages, not how people actually spoke.

<<-- people change which language they speak for political and social reasons,
generally.>>

People change which language they speak when they have a good reason to.  See
Mallory ISIE about p257 or 259.  Those reasons change constantly.  One good
reason to speak a standarsized language is to preserve information accurately
- the same reason one uses writing.  Imprecise or changing languages or
dialects defeat that purpose - preserving information, dependable
understanding, commonality of hearing and meaning, recognition over time.

And that is why people will sometimes KEEP some languages they speak from
changing.  That is why they will standardize.  And that may be why we have any
solid evidence of IE ancestral languages at all.

Regards,
Steve Long