Genetic Descent/Haitian Creole

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/22/2001 10:44:59 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

> Words and morphs are not like biological cells.  Each word or piece of
> morphology does not contain a hologram of the entire language in its DNA.
> We cannot clone an entire language out of a single word or verb
> morphology.  A language is made up of many totally independent parts.
> Why should the "genetics" of one part affect the "genetics" of another
> part.

<<This is not the way we use 'genetic' in linguistics.  We do not apply the
term to individual elements within a language.  We can no more ask whether
the English word 'pity' is genetic or not than we can ask whether it is
green and squishy.>>

Well, that's fine.  And I know a guy who refuses to call his mother "mom".
But at least he has an explanation for it.

Is there a more "pithy" answer to why there can only be one genetic ancestor
than this one?

Regards,
Steve Long