The UPenn IE Tree (a test)

[Rick Mc Callister]

>On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

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

>> 	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.

>The moderator already answered the case of Ladino, but let me answer about
>Tok Pisin.  Tok Pisin is a creole.  English is not an "ancestor" of Tok
>Pisin in the same sense that Latin is an "ancestor" of Italian; lineal
>descent and creolization are two totally different things.

	Why not? Creolization and Pidginization are languages with more
than one lineal ancestor. There would be no Tok Pisin if it weren't for
English.
	One could argue that the relation between English and Tok Pisin [et
al.] isn't that different form the relationship between Latin and the
Romance languages. One could also point to the parallel diglossic
relationships between English and "New English" and between Latin and
Romance during the days when Latin was writen and spoken by [at least part
of] the elite while Romance was spoken by the masses.

	Re mother-daughter languages, it's certainly plausible for dialects
to change at different rates and for a dialect, due to isolation or
emmigration, to evolve into another language while the parent language is
still spoken in the home country [or vice versa if one considers the
situation of Icelandic vis-a-vis Norwegian Landsmal/Nynorsk].

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