Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

Dr. John E. McLaughlin mclasutt at brigham.net
Sat Sep 11 13:08:44 UTC 1999


Steve Long wrote:

> Now, how long does it take for a dialect to develop in that
> parent and turn
> into a different language?

> If a language can definitionally stay the same language for 400
> years, and if
> a daughter can develop in last than 400 years, then its obvious.
> A daughter
> can be in existence while the parent is alive and well.

Here's a real-world example.  The Shoshoni language is spoken over a broad
dialect continuum from southwest Nevada to central Wyoming.  We'll focus on
one of those dialects--Wind River, or Eastern, Shoshoni.  In the early
eighteenth century, several of the bands of Eastern Shoshoni moved south
onto the plains of Texas to be nearer the Mexican horse supplies.  Several
low-level phonetic shifts then occurred in the language of that Texas bunch.
Documentary evidence from 1786 and 1825 suggest that the most dramatic of
those shifts occurred during that time frame.  While the phonological
structure of Comanche remains similar to Eastern Shoshoni, the phonetics
make the two languages mutually unintelligible without practice (like
Spanish and Portuguese).  Eastern Shoshoni has not undergone any noticeable
sound changes in that same time period (based on analysis of the whole
dialect continuum and the easy way that the Comanche changes can be tracked
from modern Eastern Shoshoni).  All the specialists in this language
situation (the late Wick Miller, myself, James Armagost, and Jean Charney)
agreed on this historical situation.  I would say that this is a clear
real-world example of a daughter co-existing with a parent.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)



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