the meaning of "genetic relationship"

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Tue, 23 Jun 1998 ERobert52 at aol.com wrote:
 
It may help if I say that I view the origin of creole languages as the
birth of a new language, not a continuation of any (or either) of the
languages that have contributed to its formation. The basis of this view
is precisely that the first native speaker is not mutually intelligible
with any other native speaker, though obviously mutually intelligible with
other speakers for whom it is a secondary language. [Please note the
restriction to creole languages; creole dialects are still connected with
non-creole dialects in a common language.]
 
There is nothing sacred in a definition, but what is desirable is one that
works. I restrict the term 'genetic relationship' to native languages,
i.e. non-artificial languages. Cornish does not lose its genetic
relationship because it was revived, but it nay matter at some point
whether the Cornish feature was present in its first native state or
found only in its revived state. The same can be said of Hebrew; a revived
language can not be regarded as a continyous language in principle even if
for some purposes the difference may turn out not to matter.It seems
obvious that the genetic relationship of Cornish and Hebrew depends on
their first state of continuity, not their revival.
 
 > 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
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