Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[Larry Trask]

On Sat, 18 Sep 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> 1.  The fact that Latin was clearly a living, identifiable language
> at some point would seem to make it a ideal example of a parent who
> would have coexisted in its last days with the first phases of its
> Romance daughters. It has surprised me how the arguments have gone
> on this issue.  Here is an example of Larry Trask changing the
> criterion in midstream:

> On 9/15/1999 5:36:44 AM, Larry Trask responds:

> <<In linguistics, we usually define `living language' as `language
> currently existing as a mother tongue'.  Even this doesn't get rid of
> all the problems, but it does exclude things like Latin,... >>

> Then Larry Trask quotes me:

> <<When was the last exact date Latin was a "living" language,...?
> January 17, 601 AD.  Let's say the last native speaker died that
> day.>>

> Then Larry Trask responds:

> <<Impossible.  There has never been a "last native speaker" of Latin.
> The language has millions of native speakers today...>>

> So Latin is a dead language but it has millions of native speakers
> today.

Indeed, but only if we use the name `Latin' in two rather different
senses.

In the conventional sense, `Latin' is the language of the Romans, and
it's long dead as a mother tongue.

In my (slightly tongue-in-cheek) extended sense, `Latin' is still
applied to the modern descendants of the speech of the Romans.  My point
was merely that this extended sense is not impossible in principle, but
that it is not used in practice, because we find it inconvenient.

But we have no such difficulty in applying `Greek' or `English' to a
long sequence of rather different varieties succeeding one another over
centuries or millennia.  The main reason we don't do the same with
`Latin' is that the several modern varieties are so different from one
another.  If Italian were the only surviving Romance language, we might
very well choose to call it `Latin', just as we do in the case of Greek.

> This I suppose gets around the problem of conceding that a language
> easily recognized as Latin could have been spoken at the same time
> as something that could be recognized not as Latin but as an early
> form of French.

Sorry, but I don't believe this is possible in any substantial sense.

> (I hope to get to the definitions later.  But for
> now let's define language as something like whatever Larry Trask is
> referring to whenever he has mentioned whatever it is he calls
> "Basque.")

Not unreasonable, but bear in mind that it is impossible to define the
term `language' (as opposed to, say, `dialect') in any rigorous and
principled way.  The linguistic world is just not like that.

> 2.  LT also writes:
> <<It isn't a "buzz phrase": it's a fundamental truth.  You can't wave away
> the central fact of ceaseless language change as though it were of no
> relevance to the discussion.>>

> Here's the way at this point I would illustrate how much of a buzz
> phrase it is.  One that never really adds anything or illuminates
> anything.  But is convenient in dodging substantive dialogue.

Naughty, and unnecessary.  I cannot accept, and I imagine no linguist
can accept, any dialogue based upon the plainly false premise that a
`language' is an absolute, reified object, clearly distinct from every
other language.

> When was the last time Larry Trask mentioned in a post the phrase
> "the central fact of ceaseless language change" to support any point
> he was making about Basque?  Ever? How could the central fact about
> Basque escape mention?

Steve, forgive me, but this is just silly.  I have in fact written a
500-page book on the history and prehistory of Basque.  I have also made
frequent references, on this list, to changes in Basque, mainly (though
not wholly) in response to postings from Roz Frank and Jon Patrick.
Whatever are you talking about?

> Or is it when he writes e.g., <<the evidence
> for the antiquity of the aspiration in Basque is large and of
> various kinds>>. is that somehow connected with "the central fact of
> ceaseless change" in Basque?

Of course it is.  Whatever else could I be talking about?

> I also happen to believe that there is ceaseless change in language.
> I hear it and see it every day.  But its hardly the central fact.
> For one thing, Mt Rushmore and the moon are also subject to
> ceaseless change.  But the change is not really material to the
> identification of either.

Possibly so, but languages are different in this respect, if only
because they change so much faster than the moon.

> Similarly, what central to what we call
> the Standard German is not ceaseless change whether material , but
> how German speakers use the same sounds and syntax.  If they didn't
> they're would be no German language.

Something has gone badly wrong here, and this passage is incoherent.

But the example is a nice one.  In what sense *is* there a German
language?  Why are the local speech varieties of Bonn, Berlin, Hamburg,
Zurich, Vienna, Strasbourg, the South Tyrol and Luxembourg all `the
German language' -- if they are?  Why is the speech of the Netherlands
not `German' when the nearly identical speech just across the German
border *is* `German'?

`The German language' is a sociopolitical fact, not a linguistic one.
German isn't just "out there".  It is a reality created and maintained
by people who believe there is, or should be, a `German language'.
No more.

> Of course, some changes are an important of language.  But hardly "the
> central fact."

Central in terms of the topics under discussion, though, I'd say.

> LT also writes:

> <<There was no date on which Latin disappeared and was replaced by Romance.
> The linguistic division between `spoken Latin' and `Romance' is a purely
> arbitrary one, and any date assigned to it is no more than a matter of
> taxonomic convenience.... we no longer find it convenient to call them
> `Latin'.  Of course, if we wanted to, we could speak of `Paris Latin',
> `Barcelona Latin', and so on, but no one has
> seen any point in this.>>

> In a post just before this one, Larry Trask writes "we have good
> evidence that ancient Aquitanian was an ancestral form of
> Basque...."  I suppose this supports the idea that Latin might be
> just an ancestral form of French.

No, it does not.  The conclusion that Aquitanian was an ancestral form
of Basque has *no consequences whatever* for the ancestry of French.
What on earth are you talking about?

> So I take it that he would agree - using the same purely arbitrary
> and no more than taxonimically covenient terms he applies to Basque
> - that Latin could have coexisted with filial form of Latin we might
> call Aquitanian, I mean French.

Sorry, but I definitely do not agree, if by this you mean that a speech
variety indistinguishable from that of Caesar could have coexisted, as a
mother tongue, alongside a variety of Latin so changed as to be
incomprehensible to Caesar.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk