The Neolithic Hypothesis (Standardization)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/5/99 7:35:48 AM, rma wrote:

<<Wales was not conquered by the English until the 14th Century, so Welsh
would not be of concern to a 14th Century Englishman, Scottish--whether you
mean Scots or Gaelic--even less so.>>

I was reaching for any other nearby languages that might have been mentioned
as "spoken."  Latin was.  These weren't, though they were certainly nearby.

<<However, *all* of the examples of speakers of
  Latin are drawn from the educated classes, so your point is unproven.
  --rma ]>>

My point rather was that Latin was "spoken" and quite often.  It is clear
that the prior post was saying it was rarely spoken and earlier said it was
not spoken.  The education of speakers to this point is irelevant - where
children are extremely educated we don't stop calling them speakers.

<<[ Moderator continues:
  A second language differs greatly in internal processing from a first, and
is used *consciously*, unlike a first.  Thus, change in a second language
will be different in kind from a first language.>>

[ Moderator continues:
  What he said is that languages learned naturally, which is to say as first
languages, change in ways that differ greatly from languages learned by
intentional schooling.  And *of course* languages change when children learn
them from their parents--this is one of the tenets of historical
linguistics!...>>

<<You are being argumentative for the sake of argumentation.  Mothers are not
the cause of language change, children--well, young people--are.  And the
reason that Latin does not change is that children do not learn it in the
same way that they learn their first languages.>>

I accept all of the above.  (If you look back at this particular dialogue, I
think you'll see I was not really challenging the concept of natural
languages. But I was reacting to a certain point of view that can use ancient
text to prove something about lack of change in language over1000 years and
then assert that writing proves nothing about language because it's always
changing.)

My question (way back when) was whether PIE - even though unwritten - could
have continued as a second language the way Latin did.  My point was that
Latin didn't become just a dead text, but was a continuing powerful spoken
and written influence on the existing "first" languages of the middle ages.
I've offered some evidence and I have a lot more.

In the midst of this discussion I allowed myself to stray.  Let me please
just address the issues mentioned above.

The fact of only educated speakers is irrelevant to my original point since
the educated can influence a spoken language as well as the non-educated.

Second language is irrelevant to the point -  second languages can have a
strong influence on first languages if important enough people speak it.  In
fact, it can demonstrably have a larger effect than even a neighboring first
language.

Whether Latin was EVER a natural language is irrelevant to my point.  It did
not have to be a natural language to have the large influence it had as a
second language.

The idea that Latin was not learned from mothers is irrelevant, because we
don't stop learning language when we are children and we can learn and use
and pass on a second language as adults.  How Latin changed doesn't matter,
but rather what it changed.

All of the above are irrelevant because Latin could and did continue to
change the languages of Europe after it became only a second language.  Even
if it were only a written language it would have, but it was clearly also a
spoken language whose sounds also continued to affect the direction of
development in other languages.  To assert anything else is just plain
against the evidence.

What is relevant, as you and Miguel pointed out, is that PIE was never a
written language and therefore may not have behaved like Latin - may not have
become a standardized second language that continued to affect its daughter
languages after it stopped being primary.

Finally, I want to point out that this discussion is not so much about change
as it is about continuity. That's why its subtitled 'standardization.'
Obviously if there was no continuity, there would no evidence of IE.  (And of
course we wouldn't be able to understand each other from one day to the
next.)  Of course language changes.  But what any discussion of IE is about
is not just change.  In fact it's mainly about what stayed the same for
thousands of years.

But I apologize for being argumentative.

Regards,
Steve Long