Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

> In linguistics, we usually define `living language' as `language
> currently existing as a mother tongue'.  Even this doesn't get rid of
> all the problems, but it does exclude things like Latin, Sanskrit and
> classical Arabic.  In this sense, a language is not living merely
> because it is in use.

Is formal Tamil a living language? And, if you try to regard formal and
colloquial Tamil as different registers, how do you tell different
registers of a langauge from two distinct languages?

> No; I don't think so.  The fact that living languages are constantly
> changing is central here, and trying to ignore it leads at once into
> absurdities.

Can a non-living language change?

I agree that the terms `language', `dialect' or `register' are quite fuzzy
and how we draw the lines depends on political and social factors. But so
does the term `living language'.