The UPenn IE Tree (a test)

[Sean Crist]

On Tue, 31 Aug 1999 CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU wrote:

> How about this example: medieval Franch, Spanish, Italian etc. beside
> medieval Latin, which certainly must be regarded as a living language
> but was effectively indistinguishable from the "Vulgar Latin" that was
> the actual source of these tongues?  Similarly, what about Sanskrit
> (still living, for some Indians, and long kept alive for scholarly use)
> and modern Indic languages?  If they are not descended precisely from
> Sanskrit as codified by Pan.ini, that is mere chance; there would be no
> *logical* problem in saying that they had, just as there is no logical
> problem in saying that medieval Latin coexisted with its descendants,
> the medieval romance tongues.

In both the case of Latin and of Sanskrit, the earlier litrary/liturgical
language was artifically preserved thru a specific prescriptive, scholarly
effort.  Beyond a certain point, I doubt that they were anybody's native
language.

If I utter a novel sentence in, say, Tocharian B, does that mean that
Tocharian B is a 'living' language?

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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