Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>-- At no point were Classical Latin and, say, Tuscan (substitute Romance
>>language of choice) spoken at the same time. >>

>When was Tuscan first spoken?  What is the basis of your dating?

-- I just went through an careful step-by-step illustration showing why this
is a meaningless question, a semantic null set based on a misapprehension of
how languages change and segue seamlessly into their successors.

Go back to the table with the successive generations sitting side-by-side
from 100 AD to 2000 AD.

Where is the last Latin speaker?  Where is the first Tuscan speaker?

>How do you know that a recognizable Tuscan wasn't being spoken in Tuscany at
>the same time Classical Latin was being spoken in Rome?

-- because when Classical Latin was spoken in Latium, Tuscany spoke Etruscan,
of course.

Classical Latin in Rome segued into the Italian dialect of Latium just as
Classical Latin in Etruria segued into Tuscan -- these are not mysterious
processes, and are well-attested.

>and Classical isn't the same language as Mycenaean.>>

>I'm pretty sure I remember this right.  The lastword was that Mycenean was
>considered almost indistinguishable from Classical period Aeolian.

-- no, it's _ancestral_ to _South Greek_ dialects like Arcadio-Cypriot.  Not
to Aeolian.

And Mycenaean is far more archaic than any Classical dialect whatsoever.  It
retains the "w" for example, which even Homer drops (Wannax ==> annax) and
hasn't undergone fundamental shifts like *gw == b (Mycenaean 'guasileus' or
'guous' to Classical 'basileus' or 'bous').