R: Re: Age of langs (was Tempus)

Andreas wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
> >Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > > How could that be, when Italian is descended from Latin?
> >
> >In the same sense that I as a 22-year old am older than I was when I was
> >15.
> >
> > > To get back to the earlier question, whether it's possible to say that
> >one
> > > natlang is older than another, I think the answer is yes, under
certain
> > > conditions. Obviously a language must be younger than its ancestors
and
> > > older than its daughter langs.
> >
> >"Old" is a bit ambiguous.  One could just as easily say that a language
> >is older than its ancestors, and younger than its descendants, in that
> >the whole continuum of that language, traced back to the first speech,
> >is longer than that of its ancestors.
>
> OK, I see your point. I cannot, however, resist to point out that by your
> logic I can claim to be older than my great-grandfather, who before I was
> born! I'm afterall separated from the beginning of mankind by a few more
> years ... (And in a sense all humanity during the ages is little more than
> mere recombinations of the initial gene-pool).
>
hehe! It reminds me the way Descartes used to face Aristotelics: you can't
claim Greeks were wiser than we are, after all, indeed, he held, we are 2000
years older : )

Luca