Change and What Remains

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<< And with regard to that, let me write again that bringing up "ceaseless
change" tells us nothing about whether enough "remained" of the ancestor so
that it could co-exist with the daughter.>>

In a message dated 10/6/99 9:35:22 AM, Larry Trask wrote:

<<Sorry, but, with the best will in the world, I can't understand this.
What is the force here of `enough'?>>

With "enough" of "the best will in the world" I'm sure you can figure out
exactly what I mean.

You know full well what you yourself wrote in your textbook.  You can't with
"the best will in the world" forget that you yourself drew a line at which
point a language is no longer the same language: if regional varieties of a
language "would eventually become so different from one another that they
would CEASE TO BE MUTUALLY COMPREHENSIBLE at all, and we would be FORCED to
speak, not of different dialects, but of different languages."  (CAPS ARE
MINE.)

You can say that that quote was not meant for specialists, only for students.
 But you really CAN'T say you don't understand what it meant.  It meant that
MUTUAL COMPREHENSIBILITY was the measure of when a language is no longer the
same language.  If you find that an inadequate definition for
"professionals", that's fine.  But please don't pretend that a language
"changing enough" to be become a different language - ancestor or otherwise -
is something you don't understand.  It is precisely how you described Latin
changing into other languages: "Within another couple of centuries, speakers
of Latin in Spain, France, Italy... could no longer understand each
other,...it no longer made much sense to apply a single name to this babel of
regional varieties...."

I wrote:
<<The coexistence of ancestor with daughter language is obviously a separate
question.>>

Larry Trask replied:
<<I don't see how.  A living language never remains identical from one
generation to the next.>>

With the help of "the best will in the world" I'm sure you can "see how":

There is no need for the ancestor to remain IDENTICAL in order for it to be
the same language, by mutual comprehensibility standards.  You drew the line
between former dialects and new languages in your textbook at the point where
the dialects "cease to be mutually comprehensible at all."  That is far, far
from the point where a language is no longer IDENTICAL to its former self.

And please don't bring up my non-innovative language hypothetical.  It had
nothing to do with your statement "an ancestor language cannot co-exist with
its own descendent."  That hypothetical was posted long after you made that
statement.  And never had anything to do with the truth of your statement.

As far as requiring that an ancestor must be IDENTICAL to its former self
when a descendent shows up, why would you set such a standard?  When is such
a standard ever applied in any science that observes identity over time?

You are not identical in shape or size to the person you were when you were
two years old.  Morphologically, even down to the cells you once were made up
of, you are not IDENTICAL to "Larry Trask" at that age.  However, any
biologist would be willing to say you were the same organism.  Members of
biological species are hardly identical among themselves or over time.  But a
specialist can easily identify the bones of a domestic cat or a human from
200 years ago and confidently distinguish the two species.

It is totally inconsistent to require that the ancestor stay IDENTICAL to
itself in order to be called the same language.  If you want to find a way to
make it a different language,  the obvious thing any scientific methodology
would do is point to an ESSENTIAL change, one that alters the DEFINING
CHARACTERISTICS of the language.  E.g., the point where the biologist or
biochemist or doctor would say that the organism being viewed is no longer
"Larry Trask."

<<The English that I speak is, in a reasonable sense, a daughter of the
English my parents spoke.  And the English the young people are speaking
back home, which is already noticeably different from my own, can be
regarded as a daughter of the English I speak.  In that sense, I
suppose, a language can co-exist with its own daughter.  Is that what
you mean?>>

With "the best will in the world", I cannot believe you are asking this.
This all started with my asking if the peak on the UPenn tree meant that PIE
co-existed with Anatolian.  And you think I meant that your parents are
speaking an ancestor language of modern English?

No, you don't think that.  You were quite confident in describing the
relationship between an ancestor language and a daughter and even a sister.
You wrote: <<So, that top node, with its two DAUGHTERS, represents an initial
split of the single language PIE, with one DAUGHTHER being the ANCESTOR of
Anatolian, and the other DAUGHTER being the single common ANCESTOR of
everything else.  We now often speak of `broad PIE' -- the ANCESTOR of the
whole family -- and `narrow PIE' -- the ANCESTOR of everything except
Anatolian.  Narrow PIE is a SISTER language of Proto-Anatolian...>> [Caps are
mine]

Did you mean that there were some parents who were speaking "wide PIE" at the
same time that the young people were speaking "narrow PIE?"  Is that what you
meant by an ancestor?  I don't think so.  So why would you think that's what
I meant?

And BTW did you mean that "wide PIE" was not "identical" to "narrow PIE"?  Or
did you mean that "wide PIE" was totally incomprehensible to speakers of
"narrow PIE"?  Which was it?  Apparently the only distinction you make
between "wide PIE" and "narrow PIE" is by their descendents - you don't even
seem to consider whether they were identical or mutually comprehensible or
not.

I will tell you what I meant and I think that if you use anything close to
"the best will in the world," you will have no problem understanding it.  I
will not assume that you are cynically pretending to misunderstand me.

In your textbook, you wrote about dialects fragmenting and forming different
languages:  "And it is clear that such fragmentation of single languages into
several different languages has happened countless times..."

Up to that point, a dialect is still just a variety of the original language.
(See your Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology where you define "dialect" as
"a regionally or socially distinctive variety of a language, differing from
other varieties in its grammar and/or lexicon.")

This is all that is required for "an ancestor language to coexist with its
descendent" - by your own terms above :
Given ten co-existing, changing dialects "of a language" - say, Latin as an
example - one dialect is the first to become "mutually incomprehensible."
The other nine are all still mutually comprehensible.  The nine are still
"varieties" of Latin.  The nine are dialects of the "ancestor language."  The
new language is a descendent.  They co-exist.

I think with enough of the best will in the world, you can understand why
this is a serious, good faith counterargument to your statement - in terms
drawn from statements that you yourself have published.  If you have
rethought those terms, that's fine and understandable.  But I do hope that
you will not take the position that what I wrote above is something
particularly difficult for you to understand.

Regards,
Steve Long