When a Parent Becomes a Daughter

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>This is an oversimplification.  It depends on whether there *had* been any
>relevant sound changes in the intervening period, and in general we can only
>establish *relative* dates for sound changes, if we're lucky (many times not
>even that).  Sound changes can of course not be dated absolutely if there
>are no written documents.

-- you're quite right; that _was_ an oversimplification.