Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I'm on the road dodging the aftermath of Floyd and I'd like to respond to
this post in full, but two things pop out:

1.  The fact that Latin was clearly a living, identifiable language at some
point would seem to make it a ideal example of a parent who would have
coexisted in its last days with the first phases of its Romance daughters.
It has surprised me how the arguments have gone on this issue.  Here is an
example of Larry Trask changing the criterion in midstream:

On 9/15/1999 5:36:44 AM, Larry Trask responds:

<<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,... >>

Then Larry Trask quotes me:
<<When was the last exact date Latin was a "living" language,...? January 17,
601 AD.  Let's say the last native speaker died that day.>>

Then Larry Trask responds:
<<Impossible.  There has never been a "last native speaker" of Latin.
The language has millions of native speakers today...>>

So Latin is a dead language but it has millions of native speakers today.
This I suppose gets around the problem of conceding that a language easily
recognized as Latin could have been spoken at the same time as something that
could be recognized not as Latin but as an early form of French. (I hope to
get to the definitions later.  But for now let's define language as something
like whatever Larry Trask is referring to whenever he has mentioned whatever
it is he calls "Basque.")

2.  LT also writes:
<<It isn't a "buzz phrase": it's a fundamental truth.  You can't wave away
the central fact of ceaseless language change as though it were of no
relevance to the discussion.>>

Here's the way at this point I would illustrate how much of a buzz phrase it
is.  One that never really adds anything or illuminates anything.  But is
convenient in dodging substantive dialogue.

When was the last time Larry Trask mentioned in a post the phrase "the
central fact of ceaseless language change" to support any point he was making
about Basque?  Ever? How could the central fact about Basque escape mention?
Or is it when he writes e.g., <<the evidence for the antiquity of the
aspiration in Basque is large and of various kinds>>. is that somehow
connected with "the central fact of ceaseless change" in Basque?

I also happen to believe that there is ceaseless change in language.  I hear
it and see it every day.  But its hardly the central fact.  For one thing, Mt
Rushmore and the moon are also subject to ceaseless change.  But the change
is not really material to the identification of either.  Similarly, what
central to what we call the Standard German is not ceaseless change whether
material , but how German speakers use the same sounds and syntax.  If they
didn't they're would be no German language.

Of course, some changes are an important of language.  But hardly "the
central fact."

LT also writes:
<<There was no date on which Latin disappeared and was replaced by Romance.
The linguistic division between `spoken Latin' and `Romance' is a purely
arbitrary one, and any date assigned to it is no more than a matter of
taxonomic convenience.... we no longer find it convenient to call them
`Latin'.  Of course, if we wanted to, we could speak of `Paris Latin',
`Barcelona Latin', and so on, but no one has
seen any point in this.>>

In a post just before this one, Larry Trask writes "we have good evidence
that ancient Aquitanian was an ancestral form of Basque...."  I suppose this
supports the idea that Latin might be just an ancestral form of French.

So I take it that he would agree - using the same purely arbitrary and no
more than taxonimically covenient terms he applies to Basque -  that Latin
could have coexisted with filial form of Latin we might call Aquitanian, I
mean French.

Regards,
Steve Long