Cladistic language concepts

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Ghiselin, Michael wrote:
 
>               Thank you very much for casting your vote.  It would be
>          nice if more linguists would do the same because the sample
>          as it exists is small and perhaps not representative.
>               In spite of that the preliminary results are very
>          interesting.  Not only has a cladistic language concept been
>          generally presupposed but, as you say, linguists do not even
>          consider the topic particularly interesting.  Why should
>          this be?
 
 
I'm very interested in it, for one. I work in the field of Latin and the
Romance Languages; and although (as Larry Trask said) the Romance
languages are different now from each other, and from Latin as it has
been taught to us for the last 1000 years or so (that is, the highest
written registers only, in effect, even if recited), I still see them
as a direct continuation of the original spoken language Latin (and not
just "Vulgar" Latin); that's why I have often said in lectures, and
sometimes written, that "Spanish *is* Latin, only later". I wish
Romanists and Latinists in general would realize that this is indeed an
interesting problem; and, as Larry Trask pointed out, it's only
politically-inspired divergence (usually allied to the establishment of
different spelling systems, as in 12th and 13th century Romance Europe,
or Chile in 1900, or Asturias now) that leads us to think otherwise - RW