Dead Languages and Normal Language Change
Linguists distinguish between language "death" and the process where a language becomes a "dead language" through normal language change, a linguistic phenomenon analogous to pseudoextinction. This happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, Old English may be regarded as a "dead language", with no native speakers, although it has never "died" but instead simply changed and developed into Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English. The process of language change may also involve the splitting up of a language into a family of several daughter languages, leaving the common parent language "dead". This has happened to Latin, which (through Vulgar Latin) eventually developed into the Romance languages. Such a process is normally not described as "language death", because it involves an unbroken chain of normal transmission of the language from one generation to the next, with only minute changes at every single point in the chain. There is thus no one point where Latin "died".
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The greater stroke astonisheth the more;
Astonishment takes from us sense of pain.
I stood amazed when other’s tears begun,
And now begin to weep when they have done.”
—Henry Constable (1562–1613)
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—J.G. (James Graham)
“Love brings to light the lofty and hidden characteristics of the lover—what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it can easily be deceptive with respect to what is normal in him.”
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