Dixon's "The rise and fall of languages"

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
On Mon, 11 May 1998, Roger Wright wrote to suggest that
"language splits need never occur at all" and that
"under normal circumstances languages only "split" when the relevant
groups of speakers are mostly out of contact with each other (and not
necessarily even then). Greek has changed, but it is still one language,
Greek, for the speakers are still in contact with each other" and
suggested that the counterexample that springs to mind, Romance,
is due to "writing in different ways".
 
Two things: first, there are splits between dialects which are
as clear as though between languages, whether in Greek (which I
do not know well) or in, say, Yiddish (which I do).  Second,
I cannot believe that anyone would take such radical
differences as exist between French and Portuguese say
as being due to writing in different ways.  Even in
the case of Yiddish, whose speakers have certainly been
in touch w/ e.o. over the centuries, I would think that
the dialects of Lithuania and Alsace would not have been
mutually comprehensible in the 19th or this century, so
that they would qualify as separate languages.
 
AMR