the meaning of "genetic relationship"

[Ed Robertson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Isidore Dyen asks:
 
> Do you think that linguists do not make distinction between a
> language that has first or native speakers as being alive and
> one that is dead, that is, has no native speakers? Can genetic
> linguistics be regarded as applying to artificial languages?
> To dead languages after death?
 
It cannot be true to say that languages with no native speakers
are not alive. When Neo-Melanesian was a pidgin it couldn't have
been anything else than alive. When it became a creole with
native speakers it did so by historical linguistic processes which
involved a continuity of speakers who were not necessarily native.
 
Genetic linguistics also applies in certain cases to languages of
'artificial' origin. Although the first documented instance of a
native speaker of Esperanto is 1910, Ido came into existence three
years earlier. This largely involved people who were previously
fluent speakers of Esperanto, and the *inheritance* of a central
lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactic language core
from its parent. (Ido's very name ('offspring') underlines this
fact). Like languages of 'natural' origin, this inherited core was
modified by borrowing, planning, and plain ordinary change.
 
The case of dead languages is less clear. They can exert influence
after death, particularly if there is still a community of fluent
(but non-native) speakers, as in e.g. Medieval Latin. However, here
the continued existence of a non-native linguistic community (e.g.
the Catholic priesthood) did not give rise at that time to
genetically related daughter languages, but simply to 'influence'
on other languages.
 
In the case of the revival of Cornish, where there is virtually no
historical continuity in terms of speakers between late medieval
Cornish and the revived version, I think we have to say that the
revived version is only 'influenced' by its predecessor, however
similar it might be. But we can say that the three competing versions
of 20th century Cornish are genetically related to one another,
because both 'Modern' Cornish and 'Common' Cornish were created by
fluent (non-native) speakers of 'Unified' Cornish.
 
Ed. Robertson
ERobert52 at aol.com