The Parent/Daughter Question (was Contributions)

[Larry Trask]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

[LT]

> <<Is modern English "the same language" as Proto-Germanic?  As PIE?  If not,
> then at what stage do we have a cutoff point between one language and the
> next, and why?>>

> I'm sure that Larry Trask's apparent position here - that Proto-Germanic and
> modern English can't be linguistically distinguishable as separate
> "languages" - deserves a much more formidable counterpoint than this
> non-specialist correspondent can offer.

No; this is emphatically not my position.  I may be a cantankerous old fart,
but I'm not mad. ;-)

Recall my question: is 1999 English "the same language" as 1998 English?  If
you answer "yes" to this, then it appears to me that you are doomed to arrive,
inexorably, at the unpalatable conclusion just described.  Since I regard this
conclusion as unacceptable, and since I can see no principled way of avoiding
it if the answer to my question is "yes", then I conclude that there must be
something wrong either with my question or with the answer "yes".  We may
therefore conclude either that 1999 English is not the same language as 1998
English, or that the very question is incoherent.  Take your pick.  But I favor
the second.

The only way round this is to posit sudden discontinuities in the history of
English.  For example, as another correspondent has suggested, we might argue
that, while 1484 English was the same language as 1485 English, 1485 English
was *not* the same language as 1486 English.  This ploy evades the undesirable
consequences, but at terrible cost: it requires us to regard English as "the
same language" for a period of perhaps centuries, and then to disappear
overnight in favor of a different language.  And I don't see this as a
defensible position, either.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk