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".
Read more about this topic: Language Death
Famous quotes containing the words dead, languages, normal, language and/or change:
“My dog lay dead five days without a grave”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“I don’t mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don’t show jealousy.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
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“Jaques. The worst fault you have is to be in love.
Orlando. ‘Tis a fault I will not change for your best
virtue.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)