[Foundation-l] policy on languages without native speakers

[Marcos Cramer]

GerardM wrote:
> it is the opinion expressed in the ISO-639-3.

I cannot find in ISO-639-3 the explicit claim that Ancient Greek is dead. All I can see is that the language is called "Ancient Greek (to 1453)" and that it is marked as "Historic". 

Now the fact that the language is called "Ancient Greek (to 1453)" to me only suggests that they want to include everything from Homeric Greek to medieval Greek, and not include any forms of Greek as it has commonly been used after 1453. However, the special uses of Attic and Koine Greek after 1453 are something independent from the evolution of the spoken Greek language, and are not denied by ISO-639-3. 

The fact that it is marked as "Historic" only means that it is distinct from any modern languages that are descendent from it, which clearly applies to Ancient Greek, but which in no way means it is "dead". 

So where in ISO-639-3 is there an explicit claim that Ancient Greek is dead? 

GerardM wrote:
> I have indicated and researched the obvious way out of this blockage
> but when people are not interested in taking that route, that is fine
> with me.

What you proposed was to get a code for "reconstructed Ancient Greek". First let me point out to you, that you use "reconstructed" in quite a different way to how it is normally used in linguistics. 

Read the Wikipedia entry on "Linguistic reconstruction": "Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor (proto-language) of one or more given languages." Now Ancient Greek is not an unattested ancestor, so there is no linguistic reconstruction to be done in its case!!

ISO-639-3 actually explicitly disallows codes for reconstructed languages: "Specifically excluded are reconstructed languages and computer programming languages." 

Marcos
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