The UPenn IE Tree (a test)

[Rick Mc Callister]

	It would seem that there is probably period of time when the parent
and daughter languages coexist in diglossia. In most languages, it's
perhaps a few generations but in other cases, certain circumstances [ritual
usage, elite or administrative usage, etc] can preserve the mother language
for a very long time.
	I'd imagine that the children of the elite were probably growing up
speaking Latin at home long after the children of the masses began speaking
Romance. I imagine the same is true of Classical Arabic.
	In any case, the maintainance of Latin and Sankrit as spoken
languages among the elite, albeit artificial, differs from you writing a
sentence in Tokharian

[snip]
>In both the case of Latin and of Sanskrit, the earlier litrary/liturgical
>language was artifically preserved thru a specific prescriptive, scholarly
>effort.  Beyond a certain point, I doubt that they were anybody's native
>language.

>If I utter a novel sentence in, say, Tocharian B, does that mean that
>Tocharian B is a 'living' language?

>  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701