Change and What Remains

[Larry Trask]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

[snip a quote from my textbook]

> You know full well what you yourself wrote in your textbook.  You can't with
> "the best will in the world" forget that you yourself drew a line at which
> point a language is no longer the same language: if regional varieties of a
> language "would eventually become so different from one another that they
> would CEASE TO BE MUTUALLY COMPREHENSIBLE at all, and we would be FORCED to
> speak, not of different dialects, but of different languages."  (CAPS ARE
> MINE.)

> You can say that that quote was not meant for specialists, only for students.
> But you really CAN'T say you don't understand what it meant.  It meant that
> MUTUAL COMPREHENSIBILITY was the measure of when a language is no longer the
> same language.  If you find that an inadequate definition for
> "professionals", that's fine.

Let me clarify a bit.

When a language splits into daughters, there comes a time when we must finally
speak of distinct languages.  For example, I have no problem in regarding, say,
Portuguese and Romanian as distinct languages, even though they have a common
ancestor.

But one of my points on this list has been that the time when this occurs is
not, and cannot be, well defined.  That is, there was no moment when people
ceased to speak Latin and began to speak Portuguese.  And all of my objections
to various postings on this list have centered on this fact, and on related
facts.  All the points I have objected to, it seems to me, depend crucially
upon the assumption that such a moment exists, and that the notion of "same
language" can be given a precise and principled sense.  This I deny.

Nor does the passage in my book commit me to any view that mutual
comprehensibility is the sole or principal criterion for drawing language
boundaries.

> But please don't pretend that a language
> "changing enough" to be become a different language - ancestor or otherwise -
> is something you don't understand.

In the context in which this notion has featured recently on this list, I find
this notion incoherent -- as I hope I have made clear by now.

> It is precisely how you described Latin
> changing into other languages: "Within another couple of centuries, speakers
> of Latin in Spain, France, Italy... could no longer understand each
> other,...it no longer made much sense to apply a single name to this babel of
> regional varieties...."

Yes, but again this passage was written for beginning students.

> I wrote:
> <<The coexistence of ancestor with daughter language is obviously a separate
> question.>>

> Larry Trask replied:
> <<I don't see how.  A living language never remains identical from one
> generation to the next.>>

>  With the help of "the best will in the world" I'm sure you can "see how":

> There is no need for the ancestor to remain IDENTICAL in order for it to be
> the same language, by mutual comprehensibility standards.  You drew the line
> between former dialects and new languages in your textbook at the point where
> the dialects "cease to be mutually comprehensible at all."  That is far, far
> from the point where a language is no longer IDENTICAL to its former self.

Yes, but.

First, you are confusing two things: the relation between a daughter and its
ancestor, and the relation between two or more daughters.

Second, I repeat: there is no principled or coherent basis for deciding that
daughter A is "the same language" as its own ancestor while daughter B is not.
And the positions I have argued against all seem to assume the contrary.

> As far as requiring that an ancestor must be IDENTICAL to its former self
> when a descendent shows up, why would you set such a standard?  When is such
> a standard ever applied in any science that observes identity over time?

Fine.  But you and Lloyd Anderson apparently want to defend a notion along the
lines of "A and B are the same language but are not identical".  And this
notion, I think, cannot be given any coherent content -- at least not
sufficiently coherent for the purposes you appear to have in mind.

> You are not identical in shape or size to the person you were when you were
> two years old.  Morphologically, even down to the cells you once were made up
> of, you are not IDENTICAL to "Larry Trask" at that age.  However, any
> biologist would be willing to say you were the same organism.  Members of
> biological species are hardly identical among themselves or over time.  But a
> specialist can easily identify the bones of a domestic cat or a human from
> 200 years ago and confidently distinguish the two species.

No doubt, but so what?

If we had a recording of somebody's speech from around AD 400, could we
confidently identify it as representing either Latin or Romance?  I don't think
so.  Languages do not behave like organisms, and reasoning from one to the
other is often fatal.

Anyway, it is not even true that biologists can always distinguish species with
confidence.  This applies to living creatures as much as to fossils.  At
bottom, the notion of "same species" is just as elusive as that of "same
language".

> It is totally inconsistent to require that the ancestor stay IDENTICAL to
> itself in order to be called the same language.  If you want to find a way to
> make it a different language,  the obvious thing any scientific methodology
> would do is point to an ESSENTIAL change, one that alters the DEFINING
> CHARACTERISTICS of the language.  E.g., the point where the biologist or
> biochemist or doctor would say that the organism being viewed is no longer
> "Larry Trask."

Sorry, but I don't follow.  In fact, I am astounded to see the notion of
"essential" properties being invoked.  To me, this smacks of something straight
out of medieval discourse.  And it's incoherent.

Something called 'English' has existed for well over a thousand years, but that
something has undergone dramatic changes.  What would you put forward as the
"defining characteristics" of English?  As the "defining characteristics" of
any particular stage of English?  As the "essential changes" that sharply
differentiate one variety from another?

[on my comments on generational differences]

> With "the best will in the world", I cannot believe you are asking this.
> This all started with my asking if the peak on the UPenn tree meant that PIE
> co-existed with Anatolian.  And you think I meant that your parents are
> speaking an ancestor language of modern English?

I think you're tangling up different postings on different points.

My comment about PIE and Anatolian, as I recall, simply drew attention to two
different uses of the label 'PIE' -- no more.

> No, you don't think that.  You were quite confident in describing the
> relationship between an ancestor language and a daughter and even a sister.
> You wrote: <<So, that top node, with its two DAUGHTERS, represents an initial
> split of the single language PIE, with one DAUGHTHER being the ANCESTOR of
> Anatolian, and the other DAUGHTER being the single common ANCESTOR of
> everything else.  We now often speak of `broad PIE' -- the ANCESTOR of the
> whole family -- and `narrow PIE' -- the ANCESTOR of everything except
> Anatolian.  Narrow PIE is a SISTER language of Proto-Anatolian...>> [Caps are
> mine]

> Did you mean that there were some parents who were speaking "wide PIE" at the
> same time that the young people were speaking "narrow PIE?"  Is that what you
> meant by an ancestor?  I don't think so.  So why would you think that's what
> I meant?

I didn't think that's what you meant.  But, after things got going, I found
myself deeply puzzled as to what you did mean.  My observations about
generational differences led me to observe that there appeared to be at least
one sense -- admittedly a trivial sense, in my estimation -- in which we might
say that mother and daughter languages could co-exist.  And I simply asked
whether this sense is what anybody on the list had in mind.

> And BTW did you mean that "wide PIE" was not "identical" to "narrow PIE"?  Or
> did you mean that "wide PIE" was totally incomprehensible to speakers of
> "narrow PIE"?  Which was it?

Neither.  I was only drawing attention to two different uses of the label 'PIE'
-- no more.  You should not read any more into that posting.

> Apparently the only distinction you make
> between "wide PIE" and "narrow PIE" is by their descendents - you don't even
> seem to consider whether they were identical or mutually comprehensible or
> not.

Indeed I did not, because that had nothing to do with the purely terminological
point I was making.

> I will tell you what I meant and I think that if you use anything close to
> "the best will in the world," you will have no problem understanding it.  I
> will not assume that you are cynically pretending to misunderstand me.

Oh, I do tend to be a bit cynical by nature, I guess -- but, no, I have not
been deliberately trying to misunderstand you or anyone else.  And I get rather
cross when somebody accuses me of doing this.

> In your textbook, you wrote about dialects fragmenting and forming different
> languages:  "And it is clear that such fragmentation of single languages into
> several different languages has happened countless times..."

> Up to that point, a dialect is still just a variety of the original language.
> (See your Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology where you define "dialect" as
> "a regionally or socially distinctive variety of a language, differing from
> other varieties in its grammar and/or lexicon.")

True.  But why relevant?

> This is all that is required for "an ancestor language to coexist with its
> descendent" - by your own terms above :
> Given ten co-existing, changing dialects "of a language" - say, Latin as an
> example - one dialect is the first to become "mutually incomprehensible."
> The other nine are all still mutually comprehensible.  The nine are still
> "varieties" of Latin.  The nine are dialects of the "ancestor language."  The
> new language is a descendent.  They co-exist.

Nope.

Once again, you are engaged in reification.  That is, you are assuming that,
because we sometimes find it convenient to speak of dialects, then those
dialects must actually exist as real, discrete entities "out there".  But they
don't.

Anyway, all you have cited here is a hypothetical case in which Latin splits
into two main varieties which are no longer mutually comprehensible.  The fact
that *you personally* choose to classify one of them as "nine dialects" and the
other as "one dialect" is not a piece of reality, but only your own imposition.

> I think with enough of the best will in the world, you can understand why
> this is a serious, good faith counterargument to your statement - in terms
> drawn from statements that you yourself have published.  If you have
> rethought those terms, that's fine and understandable.  But I do hope that
> you will not take the position that what I wrote above is something
> particularly difficult for you to understand.

Well, what more can I say?

In my view, the relation "is the same language as" cannot be coherently given
the kind of precise and principled content which you appear to require for your
arguments.  Except in a very broad and rough sense -- which is insufficient for
the kinds of conclusions you want to draw -- language varieties simply cannot
be divided absolutely into "the same" and "not the same".

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk