The Neolithic Hypothesis (Standardization)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>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.?

-- try proving a negative.  This is silly beyond words.

I need merely point out that when Mycenaean Greek was decyphered in the early
1950's, it contained exactly the sound patterns which reconstructive
linguistics had predicted. (Eg., 'gwous' rather than 'bous' for "cattle")

>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

-- you're confused as to the definition of "spoken".  This generally means a
natural language, one learned by children from their mothers and used for
everyday communication.  Latin was not a spoken language in this sense after
the Migrations period.  As early as the 4th century AD authors were commenting
on the gap between the 'vulgar' tongue and the written form, which was
mutating into the various Romance languages.

The written form merely maintained the polite spoken form of the late Republic
and early Empire, somewhat popularized in early Church writings.

>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.

-- this statement is incoherent and incomprehensible.

Incidentally, most preliterate cultures aren't even aware that language
changes over time.  They have no sense of historic time; they see the past as
very much like the present.

Even medieval Europeans thought this way.  That's why Chaucer has Trojans
dressing, speaking and acting like his contemporaries, and why the chanson du
gest have King David and Alexander the Great as medieval-style knights.  They
just didn't know any different.

>It was meant to be conservative.

-- once a language is no longer used and learned by children from their
parents, it fossilizes because it's not subject to the usual pressures of
linguistic change.  The pace of change in it slows down dramatically.

Meanwhile, the actual day-to-day language changes right on, unaffected.

Moreoever, no language starts out this way.  Vedic Sanskrit was a living
language when the first of the Vedas was composed (albeit it was a rather
flowery, poetic form).  It became fossilized later.

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

-- nope.  It died as a living tongue and was replaced by the Romance
languages.  By the eight-ninth century AD, it was dead as the dodo, learned
only by the literate in schools.  Repeated "renaissances" (the Carolingian,
etc.) were required to keep it from disappearing altogether.